About

With extensive experience in private practice at a number of Argentine firms between 1996 and 2003, Carlos Lanardonne moved in-house at Empresa Nobleza-Piccardo as senior head of legal affairs for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in 2004. Arriving at Novartis as head of legal and compliance officer in January 2011, he has since become legal director and country compliance head for all three of the group’s businesses: Novartis Argentina, Alcon Laboratorios Argentina and Sandoz. ‘I watched his landing there,’ one insider notes, ‘a real challenge given the highly-regulated nature of pharmaceutical. It’s a very fast moving sector with a huge IP component and extensive regulatory requirements and all three factors are strategic. His understanding of the business in such a short time is really very impressive; he also has excellent legal criteria, great common sense and works hard, going into the depths of the question in hand’. He has a small team with a senior lawyer managing legal matters, a senior coordinator in charge of integrity and compliance, and an assistant working on legal and finance; and is also reported to by the compliance officers for Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. Praised as ‘10-out-of-10’ for team work: ‘I see him as having a real talent in this area’, comments one observer, ‘he’s very executive and knows how to delegate, how to pull together multidisciplinary teams and how to listen’. Since his arrival he has completely overhauled the company’s legal capability, building a department ‘virtually from zero’ that now handles 90% of legal matters internally, has reduced litigations by some 30% and reduced external legal costs by 200% over the last three years. Among collateral efficiency gains, the company has also improved control of its compliance and data privacy programs. In the process, internal company perceptions of the team have moved from that of “a necessary ill”, to that of a key business partner. Lanardonne has also had extensive engagement in significant corporate matters, from overseeing the restructuring of Nobleza Piccardo, to more recently, the Argentine aspects of Novartis’ $12.9bn acquisition of Alcon. He sees his task as that of ‘seeking the fine balance between the role of the guardian, who permits the business and its directors to pursue a sustainable path in the long term, and that of business partner for the taking of decisions in which the risk/benefit analysis is a preponderant factor’.