About

Riccardo Ventura started his career in private practice where stayed for 13 years, gaining experience and specialising in M&A, joint ventures and commercial transactions. In moving to the in-house sector, he took on his current role at American multinational vehicle manufacturer General Motors in November 2008. At the time his job title was European general counsel, but in 2017 it was renamed lead counsel as per other regional general counsel positions within the company. The promotion to European general counsel was a very swift progression in his career, ‘it was also a major challenge’ admits Ventura, ‘since General Motors was facing an insolvency situation and the first tasks were to reorganise and sell Saab Automobile and negotiate a bridge funding for Opel and Vauxhall within Germany and other governments’. In those years Ventura learned to work in a crisis, leading a team of 30 lawyers all the while, successfully keeping them engaged and motivated. When he took on the leadership of the European legal staff of General Motors, Ventura acknowledges it was a network of generalists, each in charge of the support of the company in one European nation. ‘I have organised international teams specialists dedicated to specific practice areas, leveraging and enhancing the background and the skills of each attorney. This has permitted significant reduction of the headcount through a difficult restructuring of our European operations between 2009 and 2011, mainly through natural attrition’ says Ventura. He also seen that the business has hired specialists in areas where they lacked experience in-house, the company subsequently had significant decreases of legal expenses for both in-house and external counsel and more efficient legal services overall thanks to Ventura’s guidance.