About

Christian Haitz has been described by nominators as ‘an exceptional general counsel’ with an abundance of in-house experience having previously provided legal services to a national holding company and several subsidiaries. He chose to join Heritage B in March 2017 as he saw a great opportunity to combine his previous experiences in both public listed companies, as well as in privately held companies managed by shareholding families. Haitz initially joined as senior corporate counsel and subsequently took over the role of group chief legal and compliance officer as of 2018. In this capacity, he is part of the group executive committee, acting as the corporate secretary leading a team of seven. His ability to manage in such a multijurisdictional area has not gone unnoticed with one nominator saying he has shown ‘great leadership, oversight and judgement. In a decentralised international group with a variety of challenges he is capable of integrating different cultures and approaches and of leading his team and external counsels to handle their tasks in an optimal and efficient way’. Haitz started his in-house career in 2003 at Pöyry, a Finnish company where he first assumed responsibility for the German market with 16 subsidiaries. Following his interest to work in a more international business, he gradually started working for the Zurich office after two years, leading to a complete relocation to Zurich in late 2007. After this role, from November 2008 to December 2011, he worked at Wild Group Management, a privately held food business, mainly with business-to-business operations, and additionally with the consumer brand Capri Sun. In April 2012 to December 2016 he took on the task to set up the legal function for JTI’s Swiss market and production entity, acting as the corporate secretary and member of the extended management team. During his time at JTI, he teamed up with the corporate affairs and communication department for advocating JTI’s Swiss position in the law-making process of the Swiss tobacco products law. ‘Driving this process helped me in understanding and balancing various internal interests while matching and leveraging these with the outside opportunities to shape the legal landscape’, says Haitz. He is presently applying these skills in the ACC’s efforts to support the Swiss law-making initiative on extending the legal privilege of lawyers to in-house counsel.