About

Serving as Philips’s first in-house lawyer in Central Eastern Europe since 1996, Dr. Adrienne Benedek is responsible for establishing the internal legal function in the region and over several years has facilitated its reputation as a high quality team, in-line with the company’s business needs. Benedek takes pride in her daily operational work and for having managed several M&A projects and acting as the “go-to person” for all industrial relation issues. Benedek has also managed legal work involving several authorities mainly on quality, regulatory or consumer protection matters and supported countries in anticipation of legislative changes to amongst others corporate, labour laws and consumer protection. When Benedek started in 1996 she was responsible for Hungary, from 2006 Czech Republic, Slovakia and former Yugoslavia. By 2010 her scope increased to cover Romania, Bulgaria and support for operations in the Baltics. On the wide breadth of her inter-jurisdictional work, Benedek says: ‘I had to become a very general practitioner lawyer to manage the work and support the business but at the same time educate and create legal awareness combined with corporate environment, values, principles and ethical rules’. Most notably Benedek has been involved in several reorganisations of Philip’s business in the CEE region including the global split of Philips into two stand-alone companies in 2016, where she managed the CEE legal part. One of her main roles was in making sure all compliance and local and international laws were implicitly followed during the various M&A activities over the years. Benedek reveals, ‘I achieved this through a high degree of professionalism and respect with peers and company leaders’.