About

Hans-Michael Stracke has over 22 years of experience in the automotive industry and joined Samsung SDI in 2016, coming from Bird & Bird’s international automotive practice group.

The trained business mediator and corporate and tax lawyer started his career with an auditing company. He opted to switch to in-house lawyering with a former privately held USD$ 1 bn supply venture for automotive exhaust systems. Parallel to his legal role as general counsel for that venture, he served as the personal assistant to the managing shareholders and CEO.

Packed with that load of business education on the job, he became regional GC Europe, Asia and Africa for ArvinMeritor and served them in that role for over a decade. The broad role included corporate housekeeping for up to 35 jurisdictions and many more legal entities, commercial contracting, product liability, product compliance, M&A and competition law. Vital roles in deal sizes of multiple USD$ bn incorporating up to 30 jurisdictions and managing teams of up to 100+ external counsel were the consequence. He exited ArvinMeritor by selling the former emissions technologies business to One Equity Partners. He became general counsel of that USD$ 3 bn venture being immediately heavily involved in closing required financing transactions to replace certain bridge loans. In that role, he continued to serve as a daily key advisor to the regional management and the board.

During his tenure with Bird&Bird’s international automotive practice group, he focused on advising suppliers for electric and (partial) autonomous vehicles in all sorts of supply-related contract matters, especially as shadow negotiator and counsel on negotiation tactics and strategies, warranty and product liability cases and type approvals.

Like in his previous roles, he also formed within Samsung SDI regional-based negotiation teams to ensure the on-time handling of complex and large-scale negotiations with OEM customers and suppliers. His internal clients applaud his calm oversight over the magnitude of similar complex projects and the efficiency of dealmaking due to routine negotiation preparation. The latter is accomplished, among others, by a dedicated negotiation training programme open for the key functions, which ensures ongoing training and education in addition to the on-the-job day-to-day real-life business.

The heart of that programme designed by Hans-Michael is the combination of state-of-the-art negotiation practices with systemic organisational coaching elements. The variety of that also provides a unique leadership approach to commercial contract negotiations and related change or transformation processes going along with implementing such complex and high-value supply chain transactions.