Team size: 16

Can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently (cases, transactions, projects)?

Novo Nordisk legal has been involved in the following significant projects and transactions over the past few years: (i) driving all legal and compliance aspects of an organisation covering a geographical area of 75 countries and sales value of more than $700m; (ii) reshaping our distribution model across multiple geographies, including the flow to and from Türkiye; (iii) collaborations with local authorities and government entities in multiple MEA countries on increasing awareness around certain diseases, especially diabetes; (iv) embracing an open risk-based approach where we engage with business risks; (v) driving the internal organisation rooting the joint company culture and increasing compliance understanding through frequent communication and trainings of thousands of colleagues; (vi) managing anti-trust risks and certain investigations by competition law authorities.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

In-house lawyers will be expected to have more leadership and communication skills. Working remotely and engaging virtually have become the norm throughout the pandemic. This change of working style requires more leadership in any function to encourage team engagement and to deal with demanding workload. In-house counsel will become more specialised in their expertise; it will not only require legal expertise in traditional areas of law such as commercial and corporate law but in the areas of data privacy and protection.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected the company and the team’s priorities?

Sustainability is important to Novo Nordisk and our in-house legal team tries our best to guide the organisation to the direction that they want to improve. Novo Nordisk has an ambition of achieving net carbon neutrality by 2030 by engaging with their business partners across the globe. This means that it will be challenging to negotiate with business partners of countries with less focus on sustainability or the impact of climate change. In-house legal counsel play a key role in driving difficult agenda and ensuring comminutions between different functions and business partners to achieve the company’s goal.