About

Kai Mielke takes on an expansive and mission-critical set of responsibilities for Konica Minolta, being head of both the legal shared services unit – which takes care of the legal needs of the European Parent Company and legal support of all 28 European subsidiaries of Konica Minolta – and disciplinary supervisor of the company’s data protection team. Mielke has a number of particular in-house highlights to elaborates on just some of these. ‘The support of several company acquisitions, both local and abroad, and internal cross border mergers and restructuring measures improved and sharpened my abilities regarding project management and efficient team work’, he explains. ‘Taking over the responsibility for Konica Minolta’s European legal team gave me the chance to implement a law firm-like working style and culture’, Mielke goes on, ‘characterised in a functional segregation of duties, a high level of freedom and responsibility of the individual team members and a strong hands-on-mentality’. Mielke is proud of the positive effect he has had on the Konica Minolta legal function: ‘I think, I have improved the service culture and hands-on-mentality of the legal department. When I took over the department, my first measure was to repeal a policy which provided certain pre-conditions and processes for the involvement of the legal department in predefined issues. Nowadays there are no hurdles, no restrictions and no predefined issues. We see ourselves – and I think, we really are – an easily accessible full service provider for the whole company. And due to the functional assignment and distribution of certain competence areas our legal team members are closer related and much more associated with their internal clients than they have been before’.