About

Atos’ 240-strong legal team is among the best-performing large in-house legal teams headquartered in France and contains top-quality lawyers from top to bottom. Among its senior staff, Alexandre Menais (Group head of M&A and corporate development, legal, compliance and contract management in addition to his position as group general secretary of Atos) and Bart Aten (associate group general counsel and head of Benelux and The Nordics, SEE and Siemens account, coordinator for LCM Asia Pacific and in charge of people and talents) came in for particular praise from nominating sources, as did group deputy general counsel Damien Catoir. The latter advised mainly listed and unlisted companies in M&A transactions, in particular strategic and cross-border transactions during his extensive private practice experience and brings this expertise to bear effectively to his Atos role. ‘The culture of our legal, compliance and contract management team is driven by transparency, proximity, enthusiasm and loyalty’, says Menais. ‘Our team members are seen as true business enablers; they understand the core of the business, they support the bid teams during the bid phase, and also support the delivery being close to operations and managing complex contracts. Our team’s culture is always driven by an innovative approach, by creativity and empathy. In addition each lawyer on top of his or her current role has the responsibility to contribute to the entire team, which definitely contributes to our success’. The team has overseen the acquisitions of SIX Payment and Syntel for transaction values of €2.3bn and €3bn respectively. Regarding the latter, this acquisition was supported by Atos’ legal M&A team, IP team and corporate affairs team, and has marked a major step in the development of Atos Group with the integration of 23,000 Syntel employees. This acquisition strongly reinforced Atos’ business activities with new clients in North America and a delivery platform in India. The team also oversaw the signing of a strategic global alliance between Atos and Worldline – with preceded an exceptional distribution in kind of Worldline shares afterwards and, internally, a comprehensive digital transformation of the legal, compliance and contract management team. ‘Following a design-led methodology, we developed a very attractive and efficient tool, internally with our IT team, that reduces risks and improves efficiency and simplicity in the business decision making process. This approach not only makes the legal department a business enabler but also provides opportunities for the company to apply lessons learned to client cases related to transforming business functions, using a user experience driven approach’, says Menais.