United Kingdom 2018: The Team Elite
| Unilever
Unilever
| Unilever
| Unilever
| Hindustan Unilever
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? At HUL, our operating model is designed to deliver faster decisions....
| Unilever España
Operating as a subsidiary of Unilever, Unilever España manufactures and distributes fast-moving consumer goods such as food, home and personal products, with well-known brands such as Dove, Axe, Lipton and...
| Unilever
Covering a wide spectrum of work from M&A “white space” to digital advertising, business integrity agenda to competition law, the legal function at Unilever is ‘at the heart of the...
| Unilever
Unilever’s legal department is a small and agile team, comprising of three lawyers, Christina Vasilopoulou, who is general counsel, Kalliopi Georganda and Alexandra Moussatou. The territorial responsibility of the legal...
| UNILEVER
Headed by Colombian lawyer Jorge De Los Rios, Unilever’s seven-strong Middle Americas legal team covers the entire Andean region and Central America. Over the past two years the team has...
| Unilever
Starting its operations in the country in 1891, Unilever has offices and manufacturing locations across South Africa. Its South African legal team is overseen by general counsel Africa, Kim Morgan-Verlaque...
The Unilever Ghana-Nigeria cluster legal department operates a business partnering model comprising of six lawyers and one non-lawyer embedded within different business divisions under the supervision of Abidemi Ademola, the...
| Unilever
Risk management and integrity is a key part of the legal management at British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company Unilever, making up a large part of a company that pushes a...
| Unilever Rus
The 16-strong legal team tasked with providing legal support to Unilever’s business across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is comprised of a number of outstanding individuals. It is headed by Anastasia...
| Unilever
Vice president of legal services and general secretary Ulises Canosa Suárez leads a legal team of 50 members at BBVA Colombia, a major Colombian banking institution. The legal team is...
| Unilever
Possessing state of the art expertise in all applicable topics such as competition law, privacy, new technologies law and compliance, Unilever’s legal team in the Central American region has managed...
| Unilever Nordics
Global consumer goods giant Unilever has a strong presence in the Nordic countries, and its business activities in the region are supported by a compact but agile, knowledgeable and business-savvy...
| Hindustan Unilever
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) is an Indian state-owned oil and natural gas company and is one of the largest Indian businesses. It has 25% market share in India among...
| Unilever Indonesia
With a presence in Indonesia that dates back to 1933, Unilever has a long established history in the country and recorded revenues in excess of US$2.8bn in 2016. Reski Damayanti...
| Unilever - South East Asia Australasia
British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company Unilever has an extremely strong presence in Southeast Asia and its esteemed position in the region’s markets is reflected in the quality of its South...
| Unilever
Covering Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, Unilever’s Southern Cone operations cover a range of jurisdictions and regulatory regimes. The legal team tasked with overseeing the multinational consumer products...
| Unilever
The African market is a significant one for Unilever’s vast and diverse product range, and Unilever has in turn become one of the most important multinationals operating on the Continent....
No year is uneventful at global consumer goods giant Unilever, but 2017 in particular was memorable, thanks to the unsuccessful blockbuster merger with Kraft Heinz. It would have been the second-largest M&A deal in history, but on 17 February 2017 Unilever and Kraft Heinz issued a joint statement announcing that the deal would not take place. Klaas Evelein, Unilever’s global legal operations director, says that the aborted merger had a prolonged effect on the company, noting: ‘We’re still in the process of deciding where we want to be.’ General counsel (GC) for corporate and transactions Robert Leek, and group secretary Tonia Lovell, were the key players for Unilever on the Kraft Heinz bid. As a result of the deal falling through, Unilever sought to boost returns by selling off its householdname spreads business to US private equity house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The €6.8bn buyout was finalised in December, with Unilever chief executive Paul Polman describing the sale as a ‘further step in reshaping and sharpening our portfolio for long-term growth’. Well-regarded transactional lawyer Leek oversaw the sale. One of the more pioneering aspects of Unilever’s in-house legal team is its enthusiastic adoption of a legal operations function. Evelein is Unilever’s second legal operations director and says his role mirrors the progression of the modern GC: ‘In the past, the life of a GC was a bit simpler, but with all the challenges at the moment they realise life is more complicated! You need someone focusing on the operations. The role is looking at the strategic view as well as our IT projects and communications.’ Evelein has a legal background, having worked for six years at Dutch firms Boekel de Nerée and later SOLV. He argues this can be advantageous: ‘It’s very important to understand the needs of the legal counsel. When you’re dealing with local law, it’s a plus because you really know what’s going on.’
