About

Tim Montag began his in-house legal career in 2013 by joining European HEG (Host Europe Group) and later became the head of legal department in 2017. Shortly after, Host Europe was acquired by US-based GoDaddy. Leading a team of three people, he is now responsible for GoDaddy’s German, French, Swiss and Norwegian entities, while also playing a supporting role for other European countries. In his in-house career, Montag has assisted with several M&A transactions, including short notice acquisitions as well as two sales of the business between private equity investors, where he gathered hundreds and thousands of documents (which can be as old as the inception of the company in 1997) on short notice, giving him ‘a great understanding of how the company evolved and operates’, he says. He has also rolled out GDPR compliant behaviour across all of European companies and brands, as well as educated employees on the importance of data protection and security. During his time in current role, ‘we integrated all of our processes into the existing ones of our US-based company, which meant we had to change our way of working a lot. However, such drastic steps allowed us to keep up with the rising pace and be prepared for the challenges ahead’, he says. More generally, ‘over the last years, we have transformed from a legal department who takes care of “their own legal stuff” to a service function for the whole business. We aim to enhance existing processes while also setting up new ideas in a way that is both commercially interesting and legally compliant from the very beginning’, he continues. Montag thinks ‘legal departments need to become more of a service department for the whole business. We started with this a while back and have had huge success. Legal is included in all major developments and can help make the business compliant. While at first this was a learning experience for the whole company, the other departments gradually understood that the legal function adds value to their work and including the legal department is beneficial for everyone. I believe more businesses will see this trend in the future and that legal departments will continue to evolve from being solely responsible for their own tasks to helping everyone involved and getting the best out of their work’.