About

Operating in Norway, Chile and Canada, Cermaq is a world-leading farmer of salmon and trout. The company’s in-house legal function in Norway is comprised of chief legal officer Axel Gustavsen, who is part of the group’s executive management team and also holds responsibility for the global HR and sustainability functions, and group legal counsel Niels Georg Holm. With the salmon farming industry witnessing a drop in M&A activity in recent years because its profitability doesn’t incentivise divestments, the main focus from the legal team has been to get deeply involved in the key value-driving processes of the business and to provide legal and business advice, as well as process and project leadership to improve these processes. ‘We have seen significant value creation from this involvement, which has greatly improved the legal team’s standing in the company’, Gustavsen highlights. In addition to the creation of a legal team in Chile, Gustavsen says the most significant changes for the team in the last couple of years was the establishment of a global Cermaq compliance program: ‘This is an extensive program consisting of cross functional compliance teams of five-to-six personnel at each subsidiary, led by a team of two lawyers and our head of internal audit at group level. The program was developed and implemented in-house and has been a very successful structure for managing compliance risk in the business’. In addition to containing expert in-house lawyers, the success of Cermaq’s modestly-sized legal team can be garnered from its forthright and impressive culture, which Gustavsen explains is the following: ‘Having deep understanding of and involvement in the business processes and value drivers of the business, enabling maximum value creation and risk mitigation from hands-on legal and business advice and management into
these processes’.