General Counsel and Company Secretary | SR Technics Switzerland AG
Ticiana Kobel
General Counsel and Company Secretary | SR Technics Switzerland AG
Executive vice president legal and digital transformation | RHI Magnesita
General counsel executive vice president legal, procurement and communications | RHI Magnesita
In many ways capturing the changing nature of the general counsel role, there is much more to Ticiana’s role at Aerospace Company SR Technics than simply overseeing its legal matters. Told by her CEO that she should no longer act as ‘just a lawyer’, Ticiana and her team are expected to take the lead in negotiations and have carte blanche to finalise deals; signifying a very trustful relationship that she feels is ‘not very prevalent elsewhere’. Eschewing the ‘traditional’ role of general counsel, Ticiana is consistently consulted on non-legal matters by upper management, and is moving towards changing company mentalities to one that recognises that the legal department could be a good partner of the business. She summarises this as her being increasingly involved in the ‘core business’ discussions of the organisation. Perhaps for these reasons, when using external counsel Ticiana and her team want law firms to produce drafts that ‘can be understood in a commercial sense’ where there is a ‘bridge between wording and reality’, and avoiding ‘making something that leaves us with a big bill when we need something entirely different’. Some lawyers ‘just don’t understand real commercial issues of what we ask’ and ‘try to deliver beautiful documents without caring if they make sense or are practical.’