The Middle East is never boring. The West has long been fascinated by its geo-strategic importance and abundant oil and gas reserves, and frustrated by its variable codification of commercial laws and (in some cases) capricious political stability.
Nina Macpherson (NM): We are a truly global company and, as such, we do business in more or less every country of the world. In meeting the challenges of a global operation, Ericsson has a code of business ethics based on the UN Global Compact principles, which covers human rights, labour standards, environmental management, anti-corruption and so on.
Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, there was a local tax official. He approached the local manager of a major multinational, offering a reduction in the company’s tax bill in exchange for a bribe. When asked for advice, the general counsel of the multinational forbade the bribe, because to make a payment to the local tax official would be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
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”
As with a number of start-ups, there’s an anarchistic bent to GitHub – flirting as it does between open-source hosting, building a community among software engineers and generating profits. Continue reading “From client to colleague: why lawyers should become more like coders”