About

Summing up the success of the company’s legal team, Martin Pagrotsky – Nobina’s general counsel, chief compliance officer and company secretary – explains that his function has been ‘very successful in integrating its work with other key departments and subsidiaries’. The team serves the Nordic region’s largest and most experienced public transport provider and largest bus company, and is ‘highly regarded when evaluating cost and benefit for the operating companies, and its unswerving commitment as a business supporting unit is one of its valued attributes’. Currently comprised of four lawyers and one paralegal, the team operates under the leadership of Pagrotsky, who in turn reports to the CEO and president of the company. He states legal is becoming ‘an ever-growing influence in the Nobina Group, [and] the structure and responsibilities for the team are always under development’. The department is divided into three main areas of responsibility; commercial, compliance, and information security. Corporate and contract law and litigation expert Anna-Maria Terzi coordinates the commercial division, and Emma Forsberg heads up the compliance work within Nobina, utilising three years of experience within the company and a background from the competition authority and Government offices. Speaking about the growing role of the legal department within the company, Pagrotsky explains that the team has attained a ‘respected and trusted advisory role within virtually all parts of the company’, which ‘gives the lawyers in the Group a central role in practically all critical decisions’. Part of this trust comes from its demonstrated ability to achieve the commercial goals of the organisation, including in the last year when the company successfully acquired three companies and divested one, the business’ first M&A transactions in 23 years. The legal department has been, according to Pagrotsky; ‘a key player in the successful acquisition and integration of these companies, [and there is] increasing interest to have team lawyers involved in business decisions. [This] increases the importance of the team members in understanding the principal difference in being a legal counsel and a business manager’. To summarise the team’s impact, the Nobina business is contract-based, meaning successful legal risk management is essential to its success. Influencing the business by being a ‘crucial partner’ in taking the company from an annual loss-making of SEK800m to a profit of SEK450m, and from a debt of €200m to debt free following a successful IPO and listing on Nasdaq OMX. Indeed, the company’s value has almost doubled during the last three years. More recently, in June 2018, the team secured a ‘massive win’ from the EU Commission surrounding loans given to Finnish bus operator HelB to the tune of €54.2m, which were deemed to be incompatible state aid as a result of a complaint filed by Nobina in 2011. Pagrotsky sums up the team’s culture and ethos as the following: ‘The goal is always to be the company’s most trusted and respected advisor’. He expands further and explains that Nobina is ‘acting in a market that is highly contributing to connecting and transporting people in an urbanisation era in a sustainable way, and [is] one of the most critical voices in building modern cities. Nobina and its legal department are therefore one of the most important voices of the future’.