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?

Accor has been through a major crisis during Covid with 90% of the hotels were closed, and the legal strategy had to adapt very quickly to this unknown situation. Since then, other crisis occurred, and the company strategy shifted and was adjusted. So did the legal strategy. Both legal strategy and organisation mirrors the business so they can align easily. The fact that the General counsel sits at both the ExCom and the Board of Directors ensures that the strategy is known and that the risks and opportunities can be anticipated by legal. It also relies on a legal organisation as close as possible to the business: in the regions and brands, legal reports to the region or brands CEOs, similar to the group GC reports to the group CEO.

In terms of legal strategy, legal has its own priorities in terms of tools, processes and digitalisation to be more efficient and focuses on value-added tasks and also to be able to play a strategic role. It also, business wise, align with the group’s strategy. The Group General counsel reviews with its own Executive committee its strategy every year and shares it with the Global ExCom.

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

For the last two years, my legal team has been working, in addition to its day-by-day tasks, on the complete reorganisation of the Group. The Group has been split into two divisions, which led to the setting of a new legal organisation, with the setting up of new legal entities, transfer of hundreds of contracts, of many brands and of hundreds of employees, in over 25 countries.

The legal department has also been split into two, one for each division.

This enormous task has created the opportunity to rationalise the legal team’s ways of working and processes. It also improved the mobility of lawyers, with new positions created and geographical mobility offered to some members.

This has also led the Group to adopt a new purpose. As a consequence, the legal department has adopted a new mission statement, to clarify its strategy in the new organisation but also market the comprehensiveness of its role.