About

The German automotive sector has famously benefited from the close links manufacturers have established with engineering faculties at the country’s leading universities. BMW’s hugely influential general counsel, Dr Juergen Reul, has similarly shown that closer ties between the worlds of academia and business can lead to new solutions in the field of law. Following a broad education that took him to the universities of Tübingen, Geneva and Harvard, Dr Reul worked as a faculty member at the University of Munich’s Institute for International Law and as a guest professor at the University of Oklahoma. He joined the legal department at BMW in 1991, became head of BMW’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Corporate Law in 1997, and in 2014 was given additional responsibility for patents. He now oversees more than 200 legal and support staff in the global legal, patents and compliance team. Dr Reul is widely recognised as one of the leading corporate counsel working in business today and was cited by nominators for his serial innovations in the structure and function of the BMW global legal team. He continues to serve at the forefront of global legal innovation and is now helping the company to address new strategic considerations within the automotive sector. With more than 100 years of expertise in manufacturing cars, BMW is not only a global leader in automotive technology and design, but the only truly global player in the sector to focus exclusively on the premium segment of the market. It has continued to expand into new sites – such as its much publicised San Luis Potosí, México plant, which is due to begin production in 2019 – and new advanced technologies.