About

Sopra Steria is a France-headquartered leader in digital transformation, providing one of the most comprehensive portfolios of end-to-end service offerings on the market, also with local presence in Scandinavia. The company’s legal team in Norway covers the Nordic region with Peter Lenda operating in the role of general counsel for Scandinavia. In addition, the team consists of senior legal counsel Ingvill T. Fosse and country counsel for Sweden Emma Gyllenberg. These lawyers are also supported by a data protection officer who has a partial role within the legal department. The team has been credited for helping the company’s organic growth in Norway, as well as in Sweden by the purchase of the IT consultancy company, Kentor Group, in 2017. Lenda explains the impact on his team following the legal function’s positive contribution on this deal: ‘With the growth of Sweden, [it] raised the need for an additional legal role dedicated to our Swedish business. So from this autumn we have grown to three lawyers for Scandinavia. Taking into account that six years ago I was the sole lawyer for handling all legal matters for Sopra Steria in Scandinavia, we are satisfied that the business sees the value of the legal department and has supported [its] growth for the last three years under our value proposal of “Helping.Create.Value”’. Elaborating on this mantra further, Lenda explains: ‘It is of essence to see the legal department as a positive business enabler with high legal quality. To do this we need to be present when needed, but earn our place around the table every single day. We do not want to become the “business preventers”. Our role is to see the legal value and highlight this value and risk to the business and the decision takers so that they can take informed decisions’. The team handles all legal matters internally, providing dedicated legal support and concrete legal risk analysis, such as when Sopra Steria in Norway was awarded a large public contract with the Municipality of Oslo, in order to modernise the city’s IT-operations platform which allows its inhabitants to have easier access to new digital services.