About

As the sole counsel for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) Norge, Christian Wang Schumacher covers a broad selection of legal aspects of the business, ranging from passenger complaints to purchasing aircrafts and responsibility for worldwide data security, privacy and anti-bribery matters. SAS was founded in 1946, originally divided into SAS Denmark, SAS Norge and SAS Sweden all owned in 50-50 partnership between private investors and their respective governments. One of the most monumental factors of Schumacher’s career was SAS’ battle with potential bankruptcy in 2012. To resurface from it Schumacher had to direct a lot of its non-core business to the legal team through a major restructuring. ‘There are two major circumstances that has had a great significance and impact on my work as SAS Norge’s sole counsel. The restructuring of SAS involved divesting the SAS Group airline company Widerøe’s Flyveselskap, sell or exit from all non-core airline business in SAS and liquidating companies in the SAS Group, managing and solving substantial M&A challenges’. As well as his internal work at SAS, Schumacher is heavily involved in a number of external activities and responsibilities. Schumacher established a networking and advice forum for sole counsel in Norway, to discuss the difficulties of being the only lawyer within their respective companies and to facilitate in-house counsel meeting and discussing relevant topics for the business and legal work. Making his mark on the wider legal industry, he is also a member of the disciplinary committee of the Norwegian Bar Association, dealing with all complaints on individual lawyers, their ethical behaviour and monitoring of fees. Amongst some of the big agreements Schumacher has most recently been involved in, is a significant seven year M&A transaction contributing to whole foods supply to airplanes worldwide. In April 2017 he also began negotiating the Wi-Fi system for SAS which is part of an ongoing project. Schumacher continues to operate using the “triage” concept which he says is about, ‘prioritising skills, [which] differs the in house counsel from external counsel. The skill requires an ability to be forward sighted and a “fire extinguisher” at the same time, and the ability to maintain visibility above ground. For my part I also serve as the connection of the joints and different departments in SAS, optimising the resources in the company and helping avoid duplicated work and to build efficient processes in SAS’ workflow’.