Team size: 110

What are the most significant transactions/projects your team has recently been involved in?

Coca-Cola HBC is one of the largest bottlers of the Coca-Cola Company operating in 29 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. The Company is FTSE 100 premium listed with a secondary listing on the Athens Exchange and a market capitalisation of approx. €10bn. Jan Gustavsson is the company’s general counsel and company secretary, and he is based in Zug, Switzerland.

The company’s total in-house legal team consists of approx. 110 lawyers across all 29 countries. I lead the M&A legal workstream which was very active in 2021 concluding two landmark transactions for the group for a total consideration of over €0.5bn: (I) in August 2021, the Company announced the acquisition of Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Egypt S.A.E. (CCBCE) from its major shareholders, for a combined consideration of approx. $427m, allowing the company to access c. 25 percent of Africa’s population (together with Nigeria); (ii) in June 2021, the company acquired a 30 percent stake in Casa Del Caffè Vergnano S.p.A. (Caffè Vergnano), one of the oldest coffee producers in Italy, with its long history dating back to 1882. Our legal team negotiated and concluded the transaction with the Vegnano family which included the acquisition of the 30 percent stake in Caffè Vergnano, while drafting framework distribution agreement for the exclusive distribution of the products in the territories of the company and a shareholders’ agreement between the company and the Vergnano family.

Even in the best-case scenario, Covid is likely to have far-reaching ramifications. How are you safeguarding the long-term health of the business?

We took our responsibilities as a corporate organisation and took initiatives for the Covid-19 support, disaster relief and our #YouthEmpowered programme. The company sent out cash donations as well as donations of products and equipment, for instance, we provided more than 300 refrigerators to expand capacity for vaccine storage in Greece. Our business-to-business Customer Portal has transformed into an engagement-driven digital platform for businesses, allowing us to more than quadruple digital transactions to eight percent of our total transactions in 2021. Beginning to track our business performance based on our newly validated, science-based carbon emission targets for 2030, the company established the new and ambitious targets for sustainability, announcing our NetZeroby40 commitment to reduce the carbon emissions in all our activities across the entire value chain and reach net zero emissions by 2040. Managing the supply shortages through appropriate raw material hedging initiatives and elevating the cyber-security protections for our systems and operations will be key to address these upcoming risks.