About

One of Europe’s leading sugar producers, Pfeifer & Langen has always afforded its business units and the individuals within these a high degree of autonomy based on a strong company culture favouring trust, subsidiarity and entrepreneurial spirit. Building on this, general counsel and chief compliance officer Ramon Sieveking has been working on constructing a comprehensive new compliance programme globally to allow best practices to be kept to while maintaining this flexible approach. ‘This is helping our group of companies to weather the dramatic changes to the sugar sector resulting from the abolishing of most elements of the EU sugar market regulations effective since October 2017’, Sieveking explains. When recalling his overall career with Pfeifer & Langen, Sieveking emphasises the key role that problem-solving will always have in building a top-quality in-house counsel: ‘The almost 13 years that I spent at the group legal department of Metro allowed me to experience a large variety of jurisdictions and cultures and helped me to learn adapting to different environments while always maintaining my legal and compliance compass. This time taught me also that conflicting or not fully clarified areas in the legal field have their charm and lawyers and in-house counsel should learn to manage their emotions when facing issues that are not 100% clear cut. These issues do not only infer risks but also offer opportunities’. The company is currently undergoing a modernisation programme which will see it overhaul almost all internal processes. ‘Against this background, we have implemented a continuous discussion process within the legal and compliance team on vision, mission and on how to balance the (obviously partly conflicting) expectations of different internal and external stakeholders. Overall, we are supporting the modernisation process by establishing or strengthening legal touchpoints in all business processes’, explains Sieveking.