About

The Groupe SEB legal team has a total of 50 lawyers around the world – including one vice president of legal, Philippe Sumeire – and is organised along four lines with specific divisional heads. Intellectual property and digital is led by Isabelle Bissey-Pierre, while the contracts competition distribution consumer team is headed by Stéphanie Sevenier and the corporate M&A teams are managed by Julien Comet and Jérôme Martin respectively. In 2016, Groupe SEB acquired German group WMF, the global leader in professional coffee machines and leader in cookware in Germany, and the team has been heavily involved in its integration ever since. Similarly, in 2019 Groupe SEB acquired US-based coffee machine company Wilbur Curtis which the legal team also had a major role to play in. In 2018, the department developed a new IT application which allows other business units from Groupe SEB to contact the legal department to have legal needs seen to. When a new request is in the system, it is assigned automatically to the lawyer dedicated to the topic, which allows the legal team to be more efficient in the prioritisation of the tasks, as well as proving extremely valuable for measuring and tracking its activities in order to demonstrate value. The team is also becoming more international with each new acquisition – it has proved extremely versatile in adapting to the unique requirements of its new jurisdictions.