About

Danone is a multinational food products corporation based in Paris having been founded in Barcelona. In 2018, Danone sold products in 120 markets, and had sales in 2017 of €24.7bn. The head of the legal for Danone Iberia is Francesc Casajuana Cuscó, serving as the company’s general counsel. The legal department is composed of 10 employees, including nine lawyers and one paralegal, working for all Danone businesses based across Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. The team is highly praised by a nominating source: ‘Danone Spain’s legal team is considered as a best practice team at a global level in several legal fields, such as GDPR, antitrust compliance, food law and litigation. As an example of source of talent and in order to do a roll-out for other countries, during the last few months, two people from the Spanish legal team have moved to global positions based in Danone’s Paris headquarters’. The department is structured in three areas: top line, operations and corporate and compliance. The top line area specialises in food law, marketing, commercial and antitrust; the operations and corporate area ensures the correct business performance is attended to corporate matters and business operations, and the compliance area focuses on guaranteeing compliance with regulations and company policies. During the last few years, the legal department has focused on a new goal; to guarantee proximity with all Danone business lines and to become a”co-pilot” in business discussions and the decision making process in order to ensure business sustainability and to reach solutions which fit regulatory challenges. As a result, the main aim of each lawyer is to become an expert in business lines, playing a more proactive role and having an impact in business strategy, as well as to provide the necessary legal cautions taking part of all business projects from an embryonic stage. Based on recent regulatory changes, the legal team has created a compliance project with flexibility to meet the specific needs that each business line requires. Since then, the main governance bodies have been created, including a compliance committee, and more than 600 people have been trained in different compliance areas. Talking about the team culture, general counsel Casajuana comments: ‘Our culture is to add value to our business through expertise, commitment and pragmatism. The starting point of this culture is the deep understanding of our business, in order to protect and support it, its innovations and its assets by designing and implementing a suitable legal framework which fits with business demands and requirements every time’, he adds.