About

Since January 2014, Jonas Bengtsson has been the group general counsel of Telia Company, a Swedish business that holds a commanding position in the telephone and mobile network operator markets in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and the Baltic states. With the company he advises having such a high profile role within the Swedish market, Bengtsson has had involvement in a number of important and noteworthy transactions spanning a range of different business issues. First, he explains how he has lead work relating to ‘various multi-national investigations’ on issues regarding the FCPA and related anti-corruption legislation, including the ‘negotiations of a FCPA settlement with the DOJ and SEC and a related settlement with Dutch OM, which was settled in September 2017’. Further illustrating Bengtsson’s importance to achieving Telia Company’s business objectives, he has worked on a number of divestments including ‘several businesses in Eurasia [and] of [Telia’s] Spanish subsidiary Yoigo’, and showing his multinational ability, the sales of stakes in the Megafon and Turkcell companies located in Russia and Turkey respectively. Also assisting in helping Telia in several ‘significant’ acquisitions, Bengtsson was a key part of the company’s purchase of Tele2 and Phonero in Norway, as well as Nebulah and Inmic in Finland. Not only furthering the company’s progress in dealing with its business agenda, he has been central to two distinct phases of change within Telia Company’s legal department. The first phase, he states, saw the establishment of a ‘cooperation and learning-sharing model throughout the Telia Group for all legal teams with focus on knowledge management, learning sharing and common culture and values in the legal community’. He then introduced a structured yearly process to identify core legal areas (from a business need perspective) to develop in-house expertise for those. The second phase involved the setup of a matrix model by which internal legal support is organised, which has a ‘common, legal area driven organisation with cross-border practice groups and country teams working in a matrix model. [We are]developing joint ways of working and starting up work designing legal processes for the main areas’.