About

The ‘implementation of professional and effective legal management within the passenger traffic division of SBB’ to make it a solution-driven, knowledgeable, business-enabler is the way Mark Wegmüller describes the legal function at SBB, Switzerland’s national railway company. The team consists of ‘competent, business-oriented and solution-oriented attorneys’ in a company where heads of each legal department have a ‘close advisory function to the respective management board.’ This implicit trust, combined with Mark’s success in conducting international transactions, reaching complex commercial settlements and closing new agreements with contracting parties, demonstrates his value both as both a lawyer and business advisor. With regards to usage of external counsel, Mark sees his private practice counterparts as ‘partners’ who have high expertise in their respective fields of law. He calls on them to work in a ‘highly professional way, and be rapidly available’. He stresses the importance of the quality of advice, saying he wants ‘no platinum but only gold’ when it comes to the service he receives. For him, it’s crucial that counsel also ‘receive the culture and processes of the company with its management and employees’.