About

‘[Our team] supports the dynamic environment of the Hexagon Group by providing world-class legal advice to add value and foster sound decision-making in all areas of operation. Our function is to provide, manage, and coordinate quality legal services including legal counsel and representation, litigation and legal risk management, contract drafting and review, compliance oversight and other services, and counsel to all parts of the Hexagon Group’. These are the words of group general counsel and global compliance officer Johnny Andersson, the most senior lawyer in a legal function that serves global technology group Hexagon’s total employee count of over 20,000 global staff. Comprised of approximately 70 legal professionals distributed over 14 countries, the team is in charge of monitoring all risk management efforts related to Hexagon’s group companies, encompassing compliance with laws, quality legal dealings and other regulations that apply to its respective operations. Andersson explains that it is imperative that each group company has ‘a well-functioning system for internal control, and that such systems are continuously monitored and evaluated’. The team consists of a core team containing key members such as Tony Zana, deputy general counsel of Hexagon; Collin Webb, assistant general counsel over certain divisions of Hexagon in the US; Ulrike Telschow and Valeria Zimenkova, assistant general counsels over certain divisions of Hexagon in the EU and CIS, and Haibin Xue, assistant general counsel in the China region. Wendy Ormstedt is the assistant global compliance officer overseeing all operations of compliance, and Lesley Oswald is Hexagon’s group privacy officer. All of the aforementioned individuals report directly to Andersson. As Hexagon has evolved, the company’s legal demands have become more complicated and sophisticated. The function has, in response, shown great synergy with these changing needs, and the team has established coordination groups similar to practice groups in large law firms, relating to five specialist areas. These areas are organised into four coordination groups covering compliance, M&A, IP and risk management, as well as a data privacy steering committee responsible for implementing data privacy processes related to GDPR compliance. Andersson states ‘the committee and coordination groups have enhanced our capabilities to handle matters in these fields with more depth and overall expertise, as well as facilitate know-how sharing’. The Hexagon legal team has therefore demonstrated not only an ability to reorganise and adapt, but to use its talent to oversee the ‘frequent [and] significant acquisitions’ the company executes, which average out at approximately 10 per year. With a number of examples to choose from, Andersson highlights the particularly large, complex and strategically important transactions as follows: Hexagon’s acquisition of the US-based MSC Software, the acquisition of US-based AutonomouStuff, Belgian-based Bricsys and US-based Thermopylae Sciences and Technologies, all of which the legal team had a huge impact in securing.