How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?  

During a crisis it is crucial to check whether the main agreements entered by the company, and that are vital for the business continuity, already contain clauses that allow the organisation itself to have the flexibility and alternate options that might be used during crisis times. Another important aspect is to check the efficiency and operability of the different SOPs that need to be activated. The Covid-19 pandemic was a test in this respect. The legal strategy needs to support the organisation in leverage on/create the needed flexibility under various aspects and be creative in finding new options to ensure the organisation’s resilience. 

How do you measure the impact of ESG initiatives on the company’s overall performance and reputation?  

AZ’s strategy and bold ambition is deeply based on ESG aspects. Indeed, we seek to create value beyond the impact of our medicines by embedding sustainability into everything we do – from the lab to the patient. We are committed to contributing to a more sustainable future for people, society and the planet. Our sustainability strategy envisage three interconnected priorities: 1) access to healthcare, by promoting prevention, increasing access to life-saving treatments and strengthening health system resilience and sustainability; 2) environmental protection, by accelerating the delivery of net-zero healthcare, proactively managing our environmental impact across all activities and investing in nature and biodiversity; 3) ethics and transparency, by ensuring ethical, open and inclusive behaviour across our organisation and value chain. 

AZ established back in 2021 the Board’s Sustainability Committee, which assesses progress on the implementation of our sustainability strategy, oversees communication of sustainability activities with stakeholders, provides input to the Board and other Board Committees on sustainability matters, and helps ensure AZ moves forward in the most impactful way. There is also a Sustainability Steering Committee (SteerCo). The SteerCo is responsible for monitoring key sustainability impacts, risks and opportunities, including reporting and compliance, and ensuring (1) appropriate mitigation measures, (2) sustainability data quality and transition to reasonable assurance and (3) that cross functional teams are in place to manage ESG risks, regulatory reporting compliance and ESG ratings. 

What do you see as the major legal challenges for businesses in Italy over the next five years, and how are you preparing to address them? 

I would say that the main challenges are also big opportunities as the digital and data revolution clearly need to be understood and pose some threats but at the same time, they represent unprecedented opportunities. 

Financial sustainability of public investments in business sectors, like for instance the health sector, is clearly a challenge for the industries. To this end, it is essential to closely monitor the new measures aimed to contain the expenditure and help our stakeholders understand the importance to start in advance early discussions on measures to be adopted to find, whenever it is feasible, win-win solutions. 

New collaborations and partnerships with Government and Institution, Universities are also a big opportunity that must be managed properly to avoid compliance issues. There are much more requests than in the past for public-private partnerships. This is currently mainly due to an investment plan named Next Generation EU in the EU which provided huge financing to the states provided they used this money to re-invest in measures to help the development of the countries. It is likely that also in the future, even beyond the Next Generation EU, the trend will become structural, as the private entities hold capabilities that can be put at the service of the public sector.