About

At Hochtief Solutions, the European business of the globally operating German construction company founded in 1873, Georg von Bronk has managed to ‘transform the legal department into a modern, service-oriented business unit’. 2013 was an eventful year for the company’s legal department, marked by a thorough restructuring of European activities. Observers are deeply impressed with how von Bronk has been guiding the company through ‘stormy and tricky times’. But his role has not been immune to change either: After heading Hochtief Solutions’ legal and risk governance department, which has been dissolved, von Bronk has been focusing, from April 2014, on his new role as general counsel at Hochtief. He is heading a team of 30 lawyers, with further legal counsel from the US and Asia reporting to him. Looking back, one of his major success stories has been restructuring the legal department, just after he took. ‘From a decentralised department that had been subject to heavy criticism and that was marked by high turnover emerged a powerful team that can handle large transactions and complex tasks which previously were dealt with by external counsel’. Particularly the creation of the so-called ‘expert career’ made this possible, a path that ‘next to a dedicated senior manager path emphasises additional, different perspectives to be pursued by employees, a system that later has been implemented company-wide’. What he enjoys most is the ‘achievement of the necessary mix of neat legal work and business-oriented approach’. Law firms should think over their personnel allocation, and instead of sending five lawyers rather ‘ensure that the internal communication is channeled through one person’.