About

Tom Alexander Mulder has received numerous glittering nominations with peers describing him as ‘an innovative general counsel who has integrated the legal function with the business’, and ‘a real strategic business partner on boardroom level’. Mulder’s in-house career trajectory started after working for more than 10 years in a law firm environment. He then decided he wanted to broaden his scope and move to the in-house sphere. ‘I experienced the dynamics of working in a company and it was inevitable that I would make that step as soon as possible’, explains Mulder. He went on to apply for a senior commercial counsel role at Royal Philips in Amsterdam, when they had just sold Philips Semiconductors to private equity (NXP) and he soon joined the legal team in Eindhoven where his job involved the international corporate advising and litigation practice, overseeing the legal support of two business units with specific focus on negotiating and contracting. He was later appointed general counsel and in that capacity was also responsible for Russia and Turkey. After this role, he started working for a large family-owned technical company where he became a member of the worldwide management team and actively involved in all strategic decisions within the business. As the company secretary he participated in the quarterly supervisory board meetings and became head of the legal and HR departments with direct responsibility for managing the external advisors for over 40 subsidiaries in more than 30 countries. In November 2016, Mulder joined Malvern Panalytical, just before the merger of the two operating companies of the Spectris Group, Malvern and Panalytical. Currently he is the executive vice president legal, managing director and other executive positions in various countries around the world. Dedicated to development and innovation of the legal team, in his current role he has started the legal 2.0 “Business Enablement Partner” project, which aims to transform the legal department from a traditional department with business knowledge to a business department with legal knowledge. ‘We convinced the organisation to add the program management organisation (PMO) to the legal team. I am working on developing a uniform way of working for all service related departments, like HR, finance, PMO, legal, commercial and marketing’, says Mulder. ‘In two years’ time I managed to completely change the mindset of the business leaders. This year for example, all code of business ethics training was done by sales, customer support, R&D, operations, HR with legal to support, instead of the other way around. You see that employees better absorb the message and practical examples from their close colleagues’, adds Mulder.