The following interview was conducted during Elmar Büth’s time as group general counsel at 3M. In December 2021, Büth left 3M to join Ivoclar.

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

It has been a privilege providing legal support to 3M’s numerous smaller and bigger acquisitions and finance projects as well as successful litigation in several cases. In particular, 3M’s largest acquisition of Acelity and its global KCI subsidiaries for $6.7bn was the most significant projects that I had worked on as general counsel EMEA at 3M.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

In-house counsel need to lead the way to serve the businesses of their organisations in an efficient but foremost effective way, mitigating but also taking reasonable risk to fully support and help business to grow while protecting the company. As an inhouse counsel, it is of utmost importance to understand the business and its needs while always keeping an eye on the legal risks and challenges. Most importantly, building a strong relationship with their business partners is developing a relationship with them by serving the same objective to achieve the success of the company. Having the same objective and work ethics and standards with business partners is important to build trust in the relationship. Trust is for sure one important ingredient which grows through sharing personal aspects.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

The Medical Device Regulation (MDR) was certainly the one new law which has impacted the whole medical device industry. The introduction of this law kept not only legal but also marketing teams extremely busy. I have not seen many regulations affecting the whole industry as deeply as the MDR.