About

Arkema maintains a highly organised and extremely effective legal department of 75 individuals across three regional hubs – EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific – across six offices led by group general counsel Jérôme Gandon. Two of the team’s offices, Singapore and Brazil, are new additions. These are mentioned by Gandon along with the first ever legal convention and the embarkation of a new digitalisation project as the main changes to the team’s work in the past two years. Along with the planned acquisition of ArrMaz, a US-based leader in specialty surfactants in line with Arkema’s long-term ambition to achieve over 80% of sales in specialties by 2023 – Gandon goes into just some of the major project work that his team has recently been involved in: ‘We are working on a project to set up a new bio-sourced polyamide production site in Singapore, a new world-scale plant dedicated to the manufacture of the amino 11 monomer and its flagship Rilsan polyamide 11 resins which would lead to a 50% increase in its global capacities to support strong demand in Asia’. In addition, Arkema was the national supporter of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France in 2019. This partnership was to raise the standing of women in sport and in the company, as well as an opportunity to expose the Arkema brand through an event that was broadcasted around the world’. In Gandon’s words, the Arkema legal function is a team of ‘top quality professionals fully aligned with the values and objectives of the Group, working together with pleasure and respect’. Much of this is down to ‘great care in the hiring process to both identify high quality legal professionals but equally important individuals with values and soft skills’, ensuring that all individuals within the team are aligned with the Arkema philosophy. Gandon sees the successes of the team continuing, and a bright future for in-house counsel in general: ‘I see no reason why the trend which has developed in these past years showing legal becoming a key business partner to organisations stopping. On the contrary, legal should continue to increase its partnership with the business not only to ensure legal security but also to be a business contributor in many aspects. In-house legal is a business professional in its own right’, Gandon concludes. Recently, the Arkema legal department won the Golden Award in the category “Best Legal Department for Industry, Environment, Energy” at a prominent French legal industry awards ceremony.