About

One of Italy’s most recognisable brands worldwide, the Pirelli tyre company has seen a recent upheaval in its ownership having been acquired by Chinese firm ChemChina and undergoing a delisting process in November 2015. Assisting with not only this ownership change and all the associated fallout from the transaction, the legal team, led by chief legal officer Nicola Verdicchio, support all day-to-day legal activities of the company. The aforementioned delisting was achieved with significant work on the legal side, Verdicchio explaining that the team also dealt with the related task of ‘a complete refinancing and an overall worldwide restructuring of the entire Group’, the latter segregating the company’s consumer business unit from its industrial segment and the subsequent relisting of the entity. In order to achieve this, the team crated a “task force” that was ‘fully dedicated to centralise strategies on extraordinary projects, ensuring strategies are spread out and managed in a consistent way to grant a seamless approach over 160 Countries across the world’. Such efforts were subject to huge legal complexity, and the business entrusted the process to be led by the legal team, a validation of the business’ faith in the ability of it to navigate the company through uncharted waters. Veridicchio called it a ‘unique transaction’ that brought up ‘several new legal matters and regulatory changes’ which can be considered to be pioneering not only in Europe but ‘even in the Eastern market’, the team is also working towards implementing the complete digitalisation process of the entire group. A team containing more than 60 lawyers on a worldwide basis, Verdicchio describes the culture of the team as one with the guiding principle of ‘excellence’, whether in in a strictly legal sense or in other business areas; as members are ‘able to play different roles depending on the project and needs’. Team members are also requested to provide ‘ideas and experiences and are tested in different environments’. As well as these opportunities Verdicchio guides and supports the team, ‘monthly sessions are scheduled to have all team members in other countries join colleagues working at company headquarters and liaise with them. During these sessions, each member has time to jump in a specific topic and provide colleagues that are leading it with their own suggestions. Knowledge and experience sharing is of utmost importance’.