About

Since 2015, Andreas Bohrer has been group general counsel and company secretary of Lonza Group, a dual listed, Swiss SMI blue chip company, in charge of legal, compliance and IP world-wide, reporting to the CEO. He is also line manager of the regional legal heads of India and South America. He has over 20 years of experience as a legal counsel with prior in-house positions at Novartis and UBS and at Swiss law firms in Geneva and Zurich as well as Covington & Burling in New York. At Lonza, Bohrer has ensured that every business unit has a dedicated business partner on the legal and intellectual property team. In addition, he established centres of excellence to drive harmonisation. He says, ‘this model is very flexible and allows the team to immediately respond to requirements, apply the strategic focus initiatives of the company, and ensure a global approach with collaboration across regions and teams. It is important to note that we achieved this change in the service level with the same team members’. In 2016, Bohrer and his team tested this new strategy with the US$5.5bn acquisition of Capsugel. It was a major milestone not only for the company, but also for the legal and IP team. Bohrer describes it has having ‘all the elements of a US-style M&A auction process, complemented by European debt and equity financing, global merger clearance in multiple jurisdictions, followed by a successful integration of the two partners into a new Lonza’. The deal was done without increasing the size of the team and demonstrates the success of the new strategy by working together as a single global team. Bohrer highlights his ideal management style for an in-house team by identifying that, ‘good lawyering is a people’s business – and it does not stop with the in-house legal team. Legal service to the company has to be a holistic concept, with different contributors, orchestrated by the general counsel much like in a philharmonic concert – no one is better than the others, no one more important, even if it is clear that in this concert, someone will call the tune and others play a smaller role’.