About

As Borealis’ chief legal and procurement officer, Katja Tautscher is accountable for all legal affairs, insurance matters as well as the ethics and compliance programme for the entire Group. Tautscher joined the company, which is Europe’s second and the world’s eighth largest producer of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), in 2008 as general counsel. But having impressed on a number of fronts, she was promoted to her current position in 2014. As part of the promotion and demonstrating the trust the company places in her, she was appointed to the company’s “CEO Roundtable” of executive board members. So far Tautscher has streamlined the legal team’s work significantly by using automated processes and tools for operational matters and, through a dedicated business partner and competence centre concept, ensured each business has a dedicated point of contact who is sufficiently involved in business matters to understand their legal requirements. She is credited for working on the company’s successful litigation defence against purchasers of a proprietary polyethylene product, Borecene, in a claim worth £250m. She also played a leading role on setting up Borealis’ recent joint ventures with Adnoc (the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) and a memorandum of understanding with Total and Nova for a new joint ventures in the US. ‘These transactions are significant because they expand Borealis’ geographical scope far beyond Europe. For the legal department they are significant, because they prove our international focus and the ability to (tackle complex and diverse transactions’, says Tautscher. Proving her worth to the strategic goals of the company, in 2016 Tautscher helped finalise a transaction to buy all shares in a recycling company called mtm. ‘While the transaction was small in scope, it is a very important step into the recycling of plastics area, and ground-breaking for Borealis’, she explains.