Event Report

22 May 2019, Zurich

Over 90 heads of legal and senior global counsel from Switzerland’s leading companies met at Baur au Lac, Zurich at the sixth GC Summit Switzerland, with our partner, Loyens & Loeff.

Our speaker, Mo Ajaz, offered his valuable insight in how we can optimise service delivery for the internal customer. He focused on the role the GC plays as the ultimate integrator, the threats and opportunities facing todays in house legal function and how the disciplines of lean, legal operations, design thinking and change management hold the answers.

Mo Ajaz said ‘The role that the modern legal function plays is the success of any business is no longer limited to providing efficient and effective legal advice, key stakeholders are now looking towards the GC in their role as the ultimate integrator to provide direction on strategy, operations and risk. The skills and time to address these expectations can often be a stretch, we therefore need to look at other disciplines and schools of thought to help address the gap. At this session all the speakers ran through practical case studies of how to achieve this. This created a real buzz and desire to continue to explore this further.’

We introduced a new segment to our programme at this event as Mo continued the conversation with Bram Linnartz and Marco Toni, Partners of Loyens & Loeff, as they gave insight on how they support general counsel as external advisors. Our attendees enjoyed having our sponsor as part of the conversation. Marco Toni reflected, ‘Taking the time to understand the profile of a client, the strength and weaknesses of the legal team and the risk appetite, is crucial to ensure seamless collaboration between the in-house team and outside counsel’

Attendees also heard from a panel of leading Swiss GCs including Andreas Bohrer, Lonza; Kees van Ophem, Fresenius Medical Care; Josh McMorrow, Atotech and Julie Pender, Shire (now part of Takeda) who shared how they deliver value to their business.

The GC summit was a great success. It was very thought provoking to hear the dilemmas and challenges our attendees are facing and to be part of this valuable and relevant discussion’.