About

Miral Hamani-Samaan has over ten years of experience as a lawyer, she started her career in Paris as a corporate and M&A lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. There she advised Hewlett Packard Company as a junior and mid attorney. At the time, her current boss suggested that she join his team which resulted in her moving from Paris to Geneva to join Hewlett Packard Company as an in-house counsel. She then moved to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) where she has worked for nine years. Hamani-Samaan was promoted into a director and associate general counsel one year ago and was present for the Hewlett-Packard Company split in 2015, between HPE and HP Inc. In 2017 HPE closed two other spin-offs for the benefit of CSC, now renamed DXC technology, and its software businesses for the benefit of Micro Focus. As part of the transactions Hamani-Samaan led the country and holding separations that amounted to around 1,500 transactions in 70 countries each. ‘At holding level the transactions consisted in the set-up of the entire holding structure of the newly created local services and software businesses’, she explains. In addition she led the implementation of the set-up of the financial structure as well as the IP structure that would be supporting the software and services businesses after close. Hamani-Samaan takes particular pride in the innovation she’s been involved in: ‘We really try to define the lawyer of the future being in the midst of innovation and technology’, she says. In that respect, she has worked on developing the M&A knowledge management tool that is a web solution that helps the M&A attorney drive on M&A transactions and management assess the risks around such a transaction. She has also developed the integration legal practice within the company, working hand in hand with the integration lead. ‘I hope that it is helping the legal department and obviously the company to handle its integration processes in a more rational way’, says Hamani-Samaan.