What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Product Recalls

Legal is a part of the core team when facing product recalls, assisting the company in regulatory and consumer law aspects, and working together with the communications department to deal with the reputational impact of the situation. Last year we helped on several recalls, with at least one of them having major media coverage and significant impact which required our continuous support.

Class Action

The company faced a class action due to alleged quality defects of a product. As head of legal, I worked with external counsel to prepare a defence strategy for the company, considering legal, reputational, and financial risks, and managed close the case with a settlement within six months.

Guarantor of Financing Deal

In 2022, we provided support to the local affiliate to become a guarantor for a financing deal for the parent company worth €200m. We worked with local and global external counsel to analyse applicable laws and draft all the paperwork required for this operation.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

I believe artificial intelligence will have a high impact on in-house legal teams. The use of AI-assisted software to draft, review and manage agreements with third parties, should generate efficiency in the work of legal teams, allowing for lawyers to put more hours into tasks with more added value for the business. This will surely also impact our expectations of law firms in terms of efficiency, timings, and fees.

On the other hand, the growing use of AI in companies will require lawyers to become more tech savvy, to assess the impact of this technology on data protection, confidentiality issues, labour and employment laws, and obligations regarding consumer protection, among others.

If existent, can you talk about you or your company’s efforts relating to renewability, sustainability or other environmentally friendly activities?

Grünenthal is committed to sustainability and has developed worldwide initiatives towards environmental excellence, responsible use of resources and reduction of emissions. In the Chilean affiliate, three actions can be highlighted: A plan for efficient resource use, diminishing our total water use and exclusively using renewable energy sources for the manufacturing plant; our “Zero waste to landfill” project, through which 100% of our manufacturing plant and office waste is either reduced, reduced or recycle; “Trees for our planet” initiative, which in Chile resulted in planting and maintaining 1.450 native species of trees.