About

Led by Éric Boré and under the supervision of the group corporate secretary Stéphane Cassagne, the GEODIS legal team has 25 individuals among its ranks, organised under legal managers each with their own scope, missions and staff based along expertise and business lines. ‘Initially the legal work was mostly done at central level by in-house lawyers’, Boré says. ‘Now that the group is much bigger a new organisation was put in place in May 2018. There are now four regions aside the headquarters. As a result of this reorganisation, we now have decentralised lawyers in Americas, Asia Pacific and North Europe. It is thus very important to coordinate their work and ensure a common legal culture throughout the group. It involves having regular meetings to foster confident and truthful relationships’. Recently, the team has been working on some extremely important commercial contracts involving millions of Euros, the negotiations of which always involve the legal team to be on the top of its game to get the best for the company, and has also been involved in a notable antitrust case. ‘A good lawyer is always a business partner’, says Boré when discussing what makes the GEODIS legal team so effective. ‘Notably, they should be close to the business by having a very good knowledge of the activities and related constraints and have a strong sense of anticipation, proactivity and curiosity. They should also have a constant agility to support the business in order to deliver the budget and a capacity to improve and willingness to gain new expertise. This business culture is spread throughout the organisation by the top management. The legal team understands that their actions are also inspired by the same approach’.