Team size: 20

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

In 2023, the legal and compliance team, among other things, supported Danske Commodities’ growing portfolio of renewables and flexible assets. In 2024, DC will manage a contract portfolio of 12 GW power assets, which is an increase of 20% from last year’s portfolio and the biggest portfolio for DC yet.

The portfolio consists of onshore and offshore wind turbines, solar parks, CHPs and batteries. The assets are located in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Croatia and the UK. The Dogger Bank wind farm is part of the portfolio; an offshore wind farm located 130 km off the coast of Yorkshire in the UK. The project comprises three phases, each accounting for 1.2 GW of the farm’s total capacity of 3.6 GW.

Danske Commodities has signed three 15-year PPAs with Dogger Bank with a total offtake from the wind farm of 960 MW. Once fully operational, Dogger Bank is set to become the world’s largest offshore windfarm and will provide six million British households with renewable electricity.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

It is crucial for the legal and compliance team and I to be close to the business to thoroughly understand our business and products, especially since we are in an industry that develops rapidly. Interacting closely with the business teams is a prerequisite for identifying and controlling our company’s risks. In practice, that means we are present on the trading floors, talking directly to leaders and employees in the business teams physically.

How have you fostered a closer collaboration between the legal department and your business counterparts?

Trust is crucial to fostering close collaboration and getting involved in business decisions. It is also the foundation of simple processes with fast business decisions and execution. Legal knowledge is an important, but by no means sufficient component. There shall also be a focus on maintaining close ties with colleagues in the company. Common goals to be achieved by a joint effort across the organization must be established.

Do you have a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

Danske Commodities have a strategy with a focus on paving the way for green energy, strengthening automation across the entire organisation and evolving from being a mainly European company to becoming a truly global company with presence on five continents. As part of that, we aim to increase asset-backed trading by growing our customer business within flexible asset management and building a structured portfolio of renewable assets in select markets. The strategy for the legal and compliance unit has the same focus areas.

So, we are passionate about providing relevant support to our green energy activities. We will build up the skills needed to support our business on legal and compliance on new continents, and we are looking into automation of our own processes as well as supporting automation of the business, among other things, by further developing the compliance setup for algorithmic trading.