Since 2002 Swedish national Johan Harrysson has served Maus Frères International Services (MFIS), the holding company of popular clothing brands such as Lacoste, Gant, Aigle and Tecnifibre steadily progressing through the ranks and assuming his current position of group general counsel in October 2008.

Having occupied this high profile position at a distinguished French company for nearly ten years, Harrysson is rightly considered as one of the country’s top performing in-house lawyers. Recent key transactions he has concluded include negotiating the endorsement and cobranding agreement with global tennis star Novak Djokovic, the buy-back of Lacoste’s footwear distribution licence as well as setting up a joint venture in Mexico with a local partner. Throughout his time at the organisation, Harrysson has worked on transactions in a number of jurisdictions as far-reaching as Japan and Latin America.

Within the legal department Harrysson is credited for digitalising contract management and corporate records, as well as for fostering more communication between the legal function and other departments inter alia through legal training and awareness sessions. He says these changes are part of ‘demystifying legal’, explaining that ‘a lot of people had no or very little idea what the legal department was really doing. Also, getting people to know us and what we do, and that we can, in most instances do it quickly, make them come to us much more often and with the right questions, thus reducing risks for the company’.

Before taking his current position, Harrysson was deputy group general counsel at MFIS for four years and prior to that senior in-house counsel for Devanlay, the worldwide licensee for Lacoste apparel, for one year.