About

Since 2016, Francesco Marzari has been the group general counsel supporting all the legal work for Siram, a company fully owned by Veolia, a French transnational corporation that provides an array of solutions related to water, waste and energy. In his current position as well as in his prior role at Expo 2015 – where he was the chief legal officer for seven years – he has gained hands-on experience in a variety of legal matters, with an extensive background in commercial and company law, litigation, and administrative law. Joining Siram by Veolia was Marzari’s first experience with a transnational corporation and a major step in his management and team leadership abilities. In this role – in which he works closely with the senior management – he is responsible for overseeing all legal matters relating to a broad range of issues including public procurement, commercial contracts and transactions, M&A, antitrust, regulatory compliance, litigation and all other corporate matters for the company. He is also responsible for maintaining, developing and implementing various Veolia policies and procedures, including group compliance policies and associated training to ensure business colleagues are up to date and informed on relevant issues. Marzari is constantly exposed to a wide range of legal and business issues, and is responsible for managing and developing the legal and compliance functions within the group of companies that have direct reports to Veolia. Marzari has also affected internal changes within the business related to the structure of the group’s legal function. He has created a legal “business unit”; a driven organisation using flexible deployment of team members to provide for business needs and make best use of legal specialists, covering all areas of legal and company secretarial support. This change has resulted in a high reduction of legal expenses and as a consequence, an improvement on company selling, general and administrative expenses, a closer team to the four local business units, and a better business partner for the company. Marzari has also led the team through some major transactions, such as a case before the administrative judge – who in Italy has jurisdiction over public tender procedures – about three major operation and maintenance contracts valued at €450m. He has also led a case before a panel of arbitrators surrounding the interpretation of a business transfer agreement where the adverse party is claiming a compensation of €137m; a case before the Italian Competition Authority for a cartel in the facilities management industry; and a sale and purchase agreement of some special purpose vehicles operating in the energy sector worth €60m. A professional widely admired within the sector, Marzari worked with a number of major international and domestic law firms in Milan before beginning his in-house career in 2009.