About

‘I like to think we are a small but mighty team’, says Upstream’s head of legal Eleni Stathaki, when discussing what makes the company’s three-person legal team worthy of recognition. ‘Because we are few, we cannot afford a high level of task allocation, so we all do a bit of everything as needed’. ‘However’, she continues, ‘each team member has their own special focus area. I myself form and implement strategies for the legal team, and also provide guidance to it on various matters and manage the team budget. Evi Mesaikou is the legal and compliance manager who has been with the company for over seven years and handles everything to do with corporate governance – no straightforward task given that the company has several affiliates worldwide. Finally, Konstantina Markantonaki handles all administrative tasks, research of litigation, case law and legal points’. The team has been in the process of expansion for some time, with Stathaki reporting that just a few years ago the team’s main purpose was limited to drafting commercial contracts and managing commercial counsel. Now, the team is valued by stakeholders as a genuine business partner who is there to facilitate initiatives with constructive advice Internal compliance processes and procedures grew along with this, with the result that the team is now responsible for developing the enterprise risk management register. Last year, the team’s main focus aside from day-to-day work was on gearing up for GDPR compliance, but it also assisted an operational reorganisation which included the development, commercial release and commercialisation of new products. Priding itself on ‘understanding the business to offer practical and clear legal advice’, as well as on having an attitude that ‘no task is too small’, according to Stathaki, the Upstream in-house legal team provides a great deal of added value to the company through its efficient and practical working methods.