Team size: 10 persons at headquarter level, >200 lawyers within business units of which business unit general counsel has “dotted reporting line” into group general counsel 

First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently? 

Being at the RTL Group corporate centre level, my teams’ work involves both dealing with the legal and M&A matters at group level and, in parallel, doing a high-level follow-up of the legal issues and risks within business units, who have their own very competent legal teams. 

On the M&A front, the main transactions we worked on during the past couple of years are:  the sale of RTL Netherlands to Belgian media group DPG (transaction currently still subject to certain conditions), the sale of RTL Croatia to CME, the attempted merger between TF1 and Groupe M6 (France) and the similar attempted merger between RTL Netherlands and Talpa Network (both transactions were blocked by competition authorities), and the sale of SpotX to Magnite (US). 

Other than that, we handle listed company (RTL Group is listed on the Luxembourg and Frankfurt stock exchanges) and other corporate law aspects, Luxembourg media regulatory matters (most of our Dutch, Hungarian and Luxembourgish channels operate under a Luxembourgish broadcasting license), certain intellectual property aspects (such as maintenance and protection of the RTL trademark, including through litigation, and patents follow-up) and various legal follow-up (for example, GDPR, group level contracts, intragroup agreements). 

What particular industry trends are you seeing in the legal sector in Luxembourg? 

It is difficult for me to speak about the legal sector in Luxembourg specifically, since our work mainly deals with international aspects.  However, what I have noticed both in Luxembourg and abroad is the increased importance of business awareness for in-house legal departments and the ability to find practical solutions. 

In today’s rapidly evolving world, in particular when looking at the media sector or the recent technical developments in terms of generative AI, a high-and-dry back office legal department is not what companies want or need.  They rather have a hands-on business partner who goes further than just paraphrasing the law or giving advice like an oracle of Delphi.  To be honest, that also makes the work of the legal department more interesting. 

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why? 

Investing in young people in the largest sense of the word.  On the professional front, that means giving opportunities to young colleagues, supporting them to develop themselves, even if it means changing area of expertise or company, and at times hosting students as interns to allow them to experience what life in an international company like RTL is like. 

On the private front, it comes down to (hopefully) raising my children to be happy, engaged, enthusiastic, generous and responsible persons later on, and I used to be very active as a volunteer and internal board member of Youth for Understanding, an international youth exchange organisation.