About

DNV GL is a global quality assurance and risk management company for the maritime, oil and gas, and energy industries amongst others. The company’s headquarters in Norway has a legal team of 12 lawyers, while the total global team consists of 25 lawyers located in London, Hamburg, Houston, Shanghai, Singapore and Dubai. Thor Winther is the group legal director and general counsel of the company, and since the merger between DNV and GL in 2013, the legal team has been focused on integrating the two legacy teams, aligning its communications and improving internal work processes. Due to retraction from several key markets, the legal function has reduced headcount by nine. To increase efficiency in these circumstances, the team has updated all of its governance procedures and carried out audits across the business to ensure best practice and increase the legal awareness of the merged company.

Most recently the legal team has been embracing digitalisation, and has challenging targets to meet. The company has developed a digital industry platform business called “Veracity”, alongside machine learning, adaptive manufacturing, blockchain solutions, SaaS and others. DNV GL is also investing in a new digital case management system; has implemented a global digital entity management system and established digital newsletters and chat groups to improve its interaction with clients. In the last two years the legal function has planned, executed and managed more than 80 mergers, business transfers and other corporate transactions, which has consolidated its business operations into one or two entities per country. The project – named “The Legal Entities Efficiency Programme” – has been a significant one for the legal team, aimed at reducing compliance and overall business costs. As well as this the group has been driving an initiative to change the way it works with external law firms.

A global panel and tender was set up for law firms and data collected to implement a more innovative approach to detect and mitigate risks and identify spending patterns. By leveraging the company’s purchasing power, the legal team has achieved significant savings through very competitive fixed rates globally and value added services. In addition to this, the legal team handles a portfolio of multiple complex cross-border disputes across the globe in relation to all business areas, with approximately 20-25 disputes in court or arbitration annually. The legal team has a strong M&A capability, having completed transactions for companies like ComputIT, Green Power Monitoring and VeChain, as well as taking over the shares in a joint venture and, most importantly the DNV Foundations buy-back of the shares from the minority shareholder which was widely publicised in late 2017 – handled internally by the team. As well as M&A, the DNV GL legal function has been involved in multiple compliance related issues, most recently the re-entering and now re-exit from Iran as well as projects involving other sanctions, GDPR, ABC and anti-trust or competition issues. Speaking of the team, a nominator explained: ‘[DNV GL] group legal is a provider of high quality legal services and a business enabler for DNV GL’.