About

Since Quitterie de Pelleport joined Solvay, the company has been through a large number of M&A transactions (55 in the past six years) and she has had the opportunity to be part of numerous other interesting and important transactions. A prime example of this is her work on the acquisition and financing of Cytec, a US-based listed company in 2015 as well as in the divestment of the Polyiamides business to BASF signed in 2017, two projects that were critical to the portfolio strategic changes. Prior to joining Solvay, de Pelleport accumulated a vast amount of experience in private practice. ‘My start in a law firm environment has undoubtedly helped me develop rigour, resilience, a sense of hard work and client focus. In addition, most of my career being in the M&A fields, both in law firms and in-house, I learnt how to be hands-on, collaborative and results driven’, explains de Pelleport. Amongst her formative career experiences is her four year professional experience gained in Asia, when she was appointed general counsel for Asia Pacific in 2010 based in Shanghai, supervising a team of a dozen in-house lawyers spread over a handful of countries. This marked a new phase in her life both professionally and personally: ‘Not only had I never managed a team before but I also never lived anywhere else than in France. It first taught me how to deal with cultural differences with humility and patience. In addition, not being an expert in the legal systems you are dealing with teaches you how to trust and rely on your teams and how to contribute in a more strategic way’, says de Pelleport. Her international experience has led her towards working on improving reward and mobility within the legal team worldwide, leading reflections on how to provide reward and mobility to the team with little resources. She has accomplished this by deploying several initiatives such as the “exchange program” within the legal department whereby people from one country present their exchange project and are then selected on several criteria, spending one to two weeks in the legal team in another country. ‘This is both a reward for the selected candidate and a cross-fertilisation of experiences and skills. It has encountered a huge success throughout the team in the past 18 months’, explains de Pelleport. She has also in the past two years focused on compliance subjects, such as anti-Bribery and anti-corruption and GDPR, and contributed as chair of the group’s Human Rights Steering Committee, to leading an initiative at the group level to reshuffle the human rights policy and improve its practical integration in the way Solvay does business as well as encouraging monitoring the performance in that area.