About

The legal team of Mercedes-Benz Türk is composed of five lawyers and five non-lawyers, led by Gamze Gökçen Karasu Pilevne, whose current role is corporate secretary, chief legal counsel and local compliance manager. The legal department plays an important role in the company’s business environment with direct access to the management board and disciplinary reporting to the CEO. Based on the developments in the regulatory infrastructure in the country as well as imminent risks posted by regulation are on the company’s radar, whilst issues related to ethical compliance also appear. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of these business challenges, the legal team combine with external affairs, public affairs and business compliance functions to manage risk and mitigate any threats to the business. In order to have this widespread coverage of different functions, experts from a range of disciplines engineering and public relations are integrated into the team. The motivation and working principles of the team reflect a business oriented and proactive manner, evaluating the business risks as well as opportunities. The team plays a central role in various antitrust, tax, foreign trade and regulatory challenges that the company may be exposed to. In numerous different cases, the legal team have led working groups within the company in order to find and implement innovative solutions and deliver tangible and result oriented approaches. Pilevne says that the biggest challenge the legal team faced in the last two years was adaptation of the company’s business to the regulatory challenges impacting the whole sector. The regulatory changes endangered the company to maintain its business functions due to its effects on production, certification, marketing and taxation of its products both forward looking and retroactive. ‘Through intensive negotiations with the authorities and challenging certain administrative decisions through judiciary where the output of the negotiations were limited, the company succeeded to depress the impacts of such challenges on the company’s business environment’ says Pilevne.