About

Legal and compliance support in Italy for global telecoms company Nokia is headed by Emiliano Berti, who in his role as head of legal and compliance for the entire European region supervises, builds and manages a team of two lawyers and one contract manager based in Milan. Describing the context of his team’s work, he states ‘the economic environment in Italy is very challenging, therefore we need to make sure the company remains in a safe harbour when doing business and legal triggers are always critical for that’. As Berti presides over the board of directors for Nokia Italy and another team member is part of the company management team, the legal function is well-integrated with the upper echelons of the business, and according to Berti is able to operate ‘without boundaries and in close collaboration’ with the other country teams of Nokia in Europe. A ‘one stop shop for general legal matters involving Italy’, the team is responsible for extremely impressive final results for the business across several areas, none more so than when they were asked to support Nokia’s global legal team ‘implementing a strict cost control project which foresees – among the other activities – the creation of a panel of global law firms appointed globally and supporting Nokia at a local level, with a consequent massive cost saving’. The positive results are described by Berti as being ‘already visible and duly measurable’. Able to speak the language of business partners as well as that of major industry players in the telecoms industry, Berti states the team negotiate on ‘the most relevant deals in Italy with the major telecoms operators and lead cases with non-telecoms operators’ showing their knowledge in Nokia’s core industry. Berti highlights Giorgio Simoncini, Raffaella Melzi and Giuseppe Ferrari as being the ‘troops on the ground’ in supervising the day-by-day activities in Italy for the company in a legal sense.