Key team members: Alex Potlog, Whitney Opara

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

As a joint UK and Ireland legal team, we are uniquely positioned to advise business stakeholders within and outside the EU and to facilitate learning and knowledge sharing across two of AbbVie’s key markets in Europe. In recent years, a key matter our team has been supporting is the integration of the Allergan business following its global acquisition by AbbVie in 2020. This strategic workstream has offered us the opportunity to advise on both the operational integration of the businesses, including new products and therapy areas, and on the alignment of our culture and values. As an overarching priority, we remain focused on engaging with internal and external stakeholders to unlock patient access to AbbVie medicines and enable novel models of care that deliver the value proposition of our innovation in a compliant manner.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been very pleased to see a gradual return to normal on the AbbVie side, with colleagues reconnecting and collaborating in person within our flexible working framework. One of the major challenges has been, unfortunately, the external environment not returning to pre-Covid levels of activity as quickly. We are still seeing challenges to the capacity of health systems around Europe, which is resulting in difficulties in elective care access for patients with long-term conditions. This is, in turn, making us think more creatively about how we work with our business stakeholders to set up compliant frameworks to address some of these issues. Going forward, we expect to spend an increasing amount of time working on innovative contracting and commercial models to demonstrate our partnership in the delivery of sustainable healthcare.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

As a global organisation, AbbVie is committed to reducing our environmental footprint and increasing sustainability through inspiring innovation. In addition to our commercial presence, AbbVie also has a significant manufacturing footprint in Ireland that continues to grow through sustainable investment. AbbVie is a ‘Guaranteed Irish’ business, further emphasising our support for sustainability and our contribution to Irish communities. Our team is closely involved in supporting AbbVie’s commitments to ESG in Ireland across all areas of the business and we are all mindful of the need to make meaningful contributions in this space.