About

Manuel Ritt-Huemer is head of legal and compliance at REWE Group in Austria, a leading retail and tourism group in Europe with its headquarters in Cologne, Germany. He oversees a mixed team of currently 12 employees, comprising lawyers and non-lawyers.   

Manuel can look back at a career of almost 15 years in law, starting as a corporate and M&A lawyer with a leading central European law firm. During this phase, he built up his capacity to manage multi-jurisdictional, multi-stream projects across many different industries. At the same time, he drafted, reviewed, and negotiated countless commercial agreements of all sorts. Moreover, he has advised financial institutions in various debt restructuring transactions. Manuel has proven himself as a pragmatic lawyer who offers practical risk mitigation solutions. He gained a reputation as a reliant and analytical lawyer with strong leadership skills.  

Being part of the REWE Group, Manuel heads the legal team of the organisation’s Austrian business, comprising supermarkets, drugstores, wholesale, logistics and several other areas. He shines in advising top executives and management on legal and compliance questions. He steers a team that provides excellent legal support in the manifold strategic and other projects. One of the core areas associated with this position is antitrust compliance, covering training, communication, counseling, and monitoring efforts. His team deals with – among others – contracts of all kinds, litigation, and the defense of administrative penalties. Through the compliance function, Manuel supervises the businesses’ adherence to internal and external regulations, while guiding the way to a modern, value-based system of integrity management. 

At the beginning of his tenure with REWE Group, Manuel restructured the legal and compliance department, developed new processes, structures, and defined interfaces and reporting standards. One focus, which he succeeded in keeping, has been establishing a legal team resilient to the disruptive changes in the industry and stays on target of the company’s and the department’s strategic goals. 

What stands out are Manuel’s unique listening skills. With patience and empathy as pivotal prerequisites, he excels in understanding most complex issues, be they interpersonal, legal or otherwise. Manuel is also talented at finding diplomatic and face-saving solutions to multi-stakeholder problems. Finally, he has the gift to navigate his team with a steady hand through the disturbing challenges of everyday. 

Manuel has retained an academic focus on corporate law, in which field he has published several articles and commentaries. To share his vast experience in the fields of law and compliance with students, Manuel holds a teaching position at the MCI Management Center Innsbruck, where he currently holds a class on compliance and governance. 

Manuel holds a doctoral degree in law (Dr. iur.; University of Vienna) as well as degrees in accounting and finance (MSc) and in international business (BSc; both from the Vienna University of Business and Economics).