About

Susan Gustafsson’s in-house legal career first began in 2003, when she joined the global alcoholic beverages company Pernod Ricard as a corporate legal counsel. For the next five years at Pernod Ricard, she worked on some of the company’s most important and high-value M&A transactions, which helped Pernod Ricard cement its place as one of the leading global companies in the wines and spirits industry. In 2008 she became general counsel and joined the executive management committee of Martell, Mumm and Perrier-Jouët, the cognac and champagne division of Pernod Ricard, the first woman and the first in-house Perrier-Jouët lawyer promoted to the executive committee. In this role she developed her skill in IP law and anti-counterfeit measures, particularly focusing on the company’s products in China. She stayed in this position until beginning of 2015, after which she took up her current position at Swedish media giant Modern Times Group (MTG), where she runs what she describes as a ‘global multi-cultural legal department of approximately 40 people in several countries’. MTG is currently in the process of splitting the company in two; one smaller part called MTGX (which will cover eSports, gaming and digital video networks) and one bigger part, Nordic Entertainment Group (TV, Radio, Viaplay, Studios and Splay Networks) which will be listed on the Swedish Stock Exchange during 2019. Gustafsson has joined Nordic Entertainment Group and has undertaken the same role as previously. When she joined the company, the legal department was split over several markets and a big team in London only specialised in content, there was ‘no lawyer in Sweden on the corporate level, no central corporate legal affairs function, very little interaction between the different teams and the M&A lawyers were not part of the legal organisation chart’. Thanks to her organisational and managerial skills, Gustafsson has now built a ‘legal community’ with various areas of expertise who act as ‘support both for all local departments in the markets but also for all central departments such as M&A, content, sports, corporate legal affairs, compliance and data protection’. Today the legal function is integrated into the affiliates and business areas’ management, with Gustafsson as part of the executive management team and the local heads of legal being part of local management teams. She explains that she has ‘worked hard to “professionalise” the legal department in terms of internal knowledge management and ways of working. We now work as one global team with a common vision and ambition and the lawyers are seen as true business partners and a vital component of the company’s day-to-day business and strategy’. For example, in the last 18 months, the business has acquired a gaming company, sold Baltics, Czech, Bulgarian and African TV and broadcasting businesses, divested its Russian assets, and tried to merge the Nordic Entertainment business (worth SEK19.5bn) with the Danish TDC Group and are now preparing the company for its IPO in 2019. Further showing her range of capabilities, Gustafsson has also been the project leader on the GDPR roll out. Summarising her achievements, Gustafsson states: ‘I have learned and developed immensely both as an in-house lawyer and a general counsel but also as a manager since I joined the company, in areas of law and corporate governance as well as in terms of leadership and management skills, project and change management skills. When you work for a media company like ours, it is not enough to like change, you must thrive on change!’