About

Coca-Cola HBC Italia is the main producer and distributor of the Coca-Cola Company brand products in Italy, and is made up of 2,000 employees operating from the company headquarters in Milan. The legal team is currently made up of seven lawyers including the legal affairs director and compliance officer, Giovanni Barone. The legal department operate with the aim of focusing the work to ‘make it simple and agile’ according to Barone. It attempts to achieve this by always being responsible and business-oriented while at the same time protecting the interests of the company. In the last two years the team has further developed its change from taking a mostly reactive, formalistic and risk-averse approach to a proactive, business-oriented and smart risk approach. As a result, the legal team now co-lead the majority of complex projects rather than just providing legal support. In this two-year period, they have won or successfully closed several pending litigations worth in total more than €20m. In addition, the most senior lawyers in the team are not just appreciated as legal consultants but also as business advisors. This level of collaboration is vouched for by internal customers and stakeholders who have praised the legal team highly: ‘In my experience I’ve never found an internal legal team with such a high level of partnership and competence fully supporting the business’ stated one such stakeholder.