About

Since February 2012, Susanne Berens Olsson has led the legal team at Göteborg Energi and is involved in all areas of commercial law, corporate law, property law, land rights, public law, public procurement, dispute settlement, compliance, M&A and commercial agreements. Olsson joined with over 10 years of experience in energy, gas, electricity, heating, fibre, power grid, power generation, wind power, biogas and gas distribution issues, as well as managerial experience leading legal teams and working as a board secretary. The Göteborg Energi Group did not have a legal department when Olsson was appointed, and thanks to her excellent judgment and ability has since built up a strong team of six dedicated senior counsels which are part of all projects, transactions and business affairs. In her first years in the role she focused on building the team and changing how the business worked with regards to legal matters. She brought in lawyers with different specialities in order to cover the widest aspects of law possible, as well as changing work methods from a reactive approach to a proactive one. There is now a great understanding internally that acknowledging legal matters early in a project helps shape business in a way that is cost-effective, omits obstacles and risks and avoids unexpected costs or losses. A number of the company’s internal lawyers are now also represented in several boards and steering committees in subsidiary companies, clearly displaying Olsson’s success in bringing a greater recognition of the legal function within the company structure. Olsson has also overseen the organisation of in-house training courses and a variety of diverse projects, such as the adaptation to GDPR, and has developed a new legal corporate governance program and is guiding the team through its development of a new compliance program and contract management system. In this process, Olsson has gained great knowledge about the energy market and the key factors for success in energy related transactions and agreements. She says, ‘the deep understanding of the business has made me a trusted advisor in all energy related affairs. I have also become an expert in legal matters regarding municipal companies. These two areas of expertise have been very important because they demand special attention in all kind of transactions within the energy market by municipality owned companies’. Göteborg Energi has gone through a major transformation via mergers, acquisitions and divestments in recent times, and Olsson has been involved in all of these transactions working with peers from different professions, coordinating internal and external stakeholders. Further proving her capability in mitigating legal challenges to the company, in the last three years Göteborg Energi had two litigations regarding competition law, a couple of litigations regarding public procurement, and has divested its shares in several companies and sold other assets and land. It has also set up new infrastructure for charging electric vehicles and is building the largest solarpark in Sweden.