About

The growth of solar power’s importance in meeting global energy demands seems destined to increase rapidly in coming years, and Sybac Solar’s general counsel Konstantin Sassen has been a legal expert in the market since joining the company in 2011. As well as amassing a vast array of knowledge of the solar power sector, he has been a central component of the company’s business endeavours as well: ‘Since 2011 my legal work has grown into the international market, as during the past eight years the company has expanded its business internationally into locations including North and South America, United Kingdom, Japan, China, Australia and other locations. Simultaneous to this international expansion, the company became highly active in increasing its business presence in Germany, which required an increased participation and responses in bid tendering. With a continuingly changing business landscape, it became imperative for the Sybac Solar Group to recognise and quickly respond to new business opportunities that were outside the existing business framework. Accordingly, I directed the company into an expansion in the area of commercial real estate project development. This was a logical direction for the Sybac Solar Group, given that the existing resources and strengths of the company could easily transition into this new business opportunity’. More recently, among his main achievements has been the development of a new real estate project development team led by the legal department. This team’s recent sales include the Wohnpark Südkreuz Berlin and New City Bedburg developments, ‘each of these two projects had an investment value of approximately €200-250m’. Sassen also sees an increasingly prominent role for in-house lawyers in Germany: ‘I anticipate that a traditional corporate lawyer’s role and understanding is already changing rapidly and will change even more rapidly in the coming few years. The distinction of corporate lawyers in the common understanding on one side and in-house lawyers on the other side will gradually shift to a broader category of “business lawyers”, which can include both in-house and outside counsel. This, I believe, will bring with it a required permeability of tasks and work within an entity’s legal team, which would also provide a welcomed increase in the quality of advice available to the entity’.