About

Stora Enso is a leading provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions and paper on global markets. Per Lyrvall is the executive vice president legal and general counsel, whose legal team in Sweden has eight lawyers, seven patent attorneys and IP staff, and four support staff. Other senior members of the legal team include Finland-based head of governance Jari Suvanto, head of ethics and compliance Pontus Selderman, head of legal services Christian Swartling, and head of group IP Katarina Nilsson. The legal department and its sub-functions support both the group and its business divisions. The organisational set-up is designed to ensure integrity and independence on ethics and compliance matters, while having legal counsel working closely with business operations, acting both as trusted advisors and gate keepers of the company reputation. In addition, each division has its own designated key account manager from the IP team. During the last few years, ‘the main focus has been to develop the culture both in the company and in the legal function’, says Lyrvall. ‘For the company, we have continued to drive towards a value driven ethics and compliance culture and to move away from a rule based culture. The success in this cultural change has been evidenced in the annual employee surveys where the ethics KPIs have improved from already high levels to even better for several consecutive years’, he continues. In order to create a more innovative culture, the legal services team is encouraged to implement work smart projects. For example, a recent project included testing AI software for initial contract review in order to save legal counsel time. The legal team has also been dealing with important transactions recently, such as the ownership restructuring of Bergvik Skog, a Swedish forest holding company, resulting in Stora Enso’s forest holdings in Sweden increasing to 1.4 million hectares, of which 1.15 million hectares is productive forest land. Summing up the team ethos, Lyrvall comments, ‘We take the lead and proactively provide innovative solutions to problems without losing integrity. We are a small but efficient team, where the team members work independently with broad mandates, and can draw from the expertise of the whole team when help is desired. And we have fun!’