Team size: Six
Major legal advisers: Pérez Llorca, Cuatrecasas, Hogan Lowells

What are the most significant cases or transactions you and your team have been involved in?

Implementing Project Focus in Spain has been the most significant transaction that our team has been involved in over the last few months. Project Focus is the spin-off of a majority interest in Daimler Truck AG from Daimler AG (now, Mercedes-Benz Group AG), meaning the separation of the truck and bus business from the Daimler Group by spinning off a majority interest in Daimler Truck AG, and thus providing the shareholders of Daimler AG with listed stocks in an independent company. Project Focus also introduced technological change in the company, driven by electrification and digitalisation, MBE legal has implemented various contract management tools implementing digital signature processes. The legal department handled a range of M&A transactions while providing necessary advice to business functions regarding anti-trust and the pandemic. In addition, we have dealt with sustainability, IoT (Internet of Things), digitalisation, privacy, car-sharing platforms, and IP regulations for the company. To provide value added work to our organisation, we actively communicated with other functions such as IT, marketing, and risk management. While implementing remote working system to handle home-working situations, we set up SharePoint to provide up to date legal guidelines and to encourage active internal communication. I am proud of MBE’s Corporate Governance model as it ensures that sustainability and ESG as well as compliance and risk management are part of the agenda of the administration bodies of the company.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

The impact of the pandemic on the digitalisation of our practice and optimisation of process have been discussed in the industry and the company over the past few years. We are now required to have a new mindset with flexible, efficient, and result-oriented attitude. The legal function at the company acquired an essential position in the company over the pandemic while managing the continuity of the company’s business and navigating the organisation to overcome uncertainty and difficulties in the unprecedented time. At Mercedes-Benz, we took the pandemic crisis as the opportunity to grow as an organisation by committing ourselves to sustainability, diversity, development as well as respect for human rights and the environment. Legal department entered dialogue with different stakeholders of the company by coordinating with publication administrations (public-private collaboration) to apply the legal framework in the context of innovation. Overall, the pandemic highlighted the importance of in-house lawyers’ communication and leadership skills.