About

Founded in Milan in 1872, Pirelli is known today as a global brand known for its world famous reputation as major producers of tyres and associated services. Today, with a turnover of around €5.2bn it has 19 production plants in 12 countries and a commercial presence in over 160. The legal team is made up of more than 60 lawyers on a worldwide basis, spread over 160 countries across the world. Senior vice president and chief legal officer Nicola Verdicchio leads the legal team since joining Pirelli Group in 2014. When Verdicchio joined Pirelli, his main question was how to organise 15 legal departments based in different regions that are in charge of legal matters of around 100 affiliates, conducting business in 160 countries, and build a successful, well-coordinated and integrated legal team. The newly formed legal team was required to keep up with the times and technology, and to be able to work with a time-to-market approach, ready and capable to perform a total transformation of the Group in a very short period of time. ‘What I needed was a team of business lawyers, partnering with the business people. So, at the very beginning, what we did together was, bridge the geography eroding the barrier of being in different geographical locations and different cultures; we had to overcome the differences. Therefore I decided to work primarily on a “personal” level: to ensure we had a group of lawyers where motivation, creativity, and teamwork was something “inside” them, something “innate”’, explains Verdicchio. The legal team is now composed of well-coordinated and prepared individuals, integrated with the top management and supported by a trusted panel of external legal advisers. The slogan of the legal team is: “to have everyone on board and create a climate of fairness”, and to strengthen this they have adopted a range of tools which ensure an environment of trust and pride within the team. ‘With these tools Verdicchio achieves the following targets: firstly, coordination and de-complexity, granting a bilateral flow of information that technically and culturally enriches the participants, having the legal issues and adopted solutions of the Group continuously updated, and secondly the creation of a climate of pride and fairness because everyone is invited and everyone is likewise heard’, says head of legal finance Emanuela Crippa.