Every day at TVN is different. Not a lot of it is spent on practising law, although when that happens, the matters that land on my desk are the most strategic or confidential legal issues. Quite a lot of time is spent on management work with my direct reports. My duties also include monitoring and presenting TVN’s point of view on any legislative initiatives that may impact operations.
Continue reading “In-house life: Marek Szydłowski, TVN Group”
‘There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.’ So said former US diplomat and politician Henry Kissinger (according to The New York Times Magazine on 1st June 1969). Most of our readers will have had the same thought – perhaps on multiple occasions – but, as veterans of business crises all know: the GC simply has to make time.
Charles Handy is often mistakenly claimed as a homegrown British management guru. He’s actually Irish, but he did spend most of his working life in Britain and still resides in the UK.
Continue reading “The sum of its parts – Charles Handy and the human factor”
GC: Schneider has been acquisitive over the last few years. In terms of the core legal team, what challenges does that represent?
Peter Wexler (PW): There are a couple of things you need to look at when you’re doing an acquisition of a company. Does it have a legal team? Some of the acquisitions we did came with small teams, some with none, and some with large legal teams.
In the last few months I’ve been involved in a number of roundtable discussions, World Café events, advisory boards, awards and publication launches, all within the in-house world. I’ve enjoyed the interactions, the company, the humour and the conversation. Some of you may even have met me at one or two of these occassions.
Continue reading “What did you do when you weren’t at the office today?”
The compliance stakes are climbing higher and higher for global companies. Over the past few years, French companies in particular have had a wake-up call: three of the ten biggest-ever FCPA fines have been levied on businesses headquartered in the country.
Continue reading “Creating a fun and interesting compliance programme – Pernod Ricard tells us how”
It happens in every private equity deal; private equity firms engage outside legal counsel to conduct extensive pre-acquisition due diligence. The primary result of outside counsel’s hundreds – or even thousands – of hours of legal review is a thorough due diligence report highlighting actual and potential legal risks associated with the target company.
NYU School of Law professor Kenji Yoshino’s Covering makes the impassioned argument that despite the enshrinement of equality in the American justice system, the right of the individual not to have to ‘cover’ or mute aspects of their difference that are perceived as a ‘choice’ remain unprotected to a large degree – in everyday life as well as the courtroom.
Continue reading “GC reads… Covering – The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights”
Along the way, RPC has taken on an increasingly international focus, making strategic headway into Asia and beyond, building on its existing membership of international network TerraLex.
In the Middle Ages, map makers would often depict a place where ships could sail off the end of the world. The dangerous straits of uncharted territory were marked by pictures of ferocious sea monsters, vividly suggesting the terrible fate in store for the unwary sailor who tried to go where there were no instructions for the journey. Continue reading “Here be dragons: starting a legal function from scratch”