It was an honour to lead the research for The Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Benelux, 2023, covering the best in-house legal talent in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The great enthusiasm of the lawyers that we spoke to was outstanding and inspiring, but the sheer level of innovative work that has been carried out in this region is even more spectacular. Interviews in this edition touch on the challenges that esteemed counsel have faced in the past year, recent innovations and the unique qualities needed to be successful.  

In-house counsel in this edition shared their biggest struggles of the past years, and the ways that they overcome such struggles, highlighting their immense ability to be flexible and adapt to the fast-changing legal and economic environment. Anna Hägg highlighted the importance of maintaining team spirit and keeping team members motivated while ‘working remotely and being under a lot of pressure due to both high workload and effects of the lockdown.’ Flávia Kaczelnik, vice president and associate general counsel of BCD Travel highlighted her goals following the disruption of the pandemic, including ‘restructuring and rebuilding the legal team with our general counsel, welcoming and onboarding new team members and creating back-up systems to better distribute task.’ 

In spite of the overall uncertainty of global and local markets following the Covid-19 pandemic, esteemed counsel in this publication were delighted to share their recent innovations that improved the way that their legal teams worked. For example, Danny Major, general counsel of Aztiq stated that their team ‘introduced a new legal database that makes it much easier for the team to manage active contracts through smart metadata.’ Indeed, much of these innovations were based around the recent advancements in technology, highlighting the benefit that such tools are already making to the legal profession. Another example of this comes from Laurens Dalmijn, general counsel of IMCD, who stated that he ‘set up a legal SharePoint – a secure place to store, organise and exchange information.’ 

In-house counsel also highlighted the unique qualities needed to be successful in their industry, and the responses were truly insightful. Industry-specific qualities, as well as more general qualities, were shared; ‘the successful in-house lawyer must be confident, yet collaborative, with the ability to listen attentively and influence stakeholders across all levels in the organisation,’ stated Maria Rocha Barros, chief legal and public affairs officer at Booking.com. Francis Westelinck, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Danone Belux, emphasised the importance of ‘moving from the role of a mere gatekeeper – to a more strategic function, embedded in the business – makes in-house legal teams more valuable.’ 

We would like to congratulate and thank all the in-house counsel featured in this edition on their incredible achievements in the legal industry, and on joining the list of hundreds of the most trusted, effective and innovative in-house lawyers across the globe. It was a pleasure to speak to all included and gain insight into the markets of the Benelux region. 

Elena Lewis | Lead researcher: GC Powerlist Benelux 2023  

At Arendt we understand the crucial role of the legal team in successfully supporting the ambitions of the companies they represent and so we are delighted to share in these celebrations and congratulate all who have been recognised in “The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist: Benelux” Teams.

■Recently, so many things have happened that were unimaginable a few years ago and it is no understatement to say that they have been unprecedented years of change across the globe. The environment in which companies are operating has dramatically changed: new regulations, increasing focus on compliance, growing environmental concerns, trade conflicts, and political tensions and escallations have been a constant source of challenge for businesses. The demands on legal teams have never been greater in providing support, insight, compliance and solutions to ensure long-term viability while maintaining flexibility.

■Tonight, we recognise and applaude the legal teams and GC’s who play such an important role in helping their companies overcome hurdles and implement their strategies by successfully navigating legal and regulatory challenges. Often managing legal teams across multiple geographical locations, GC’s have a broad remit to ensure that cross-border activities can thrive at a time of dramatic global change and need to demonstrate excellence in areas far beyond the legal sphere.

■Increasingly, external legal advisors need to be more than just purveyors of legal advice, but real business partners who have a global view and help GC’s and legal teams navigate and anticipate the changing legal, tax and regulatory landscape. As a full-service law firm, Arendt offers a comprehensive and integrated approach to help GC’s and their legal teams to overcome all these new challenges by providing them with practical answers to their legal, regulatory and tax questions.

■Along with Houthoff and Liedekerke, we are proud to say that many of the companies represented here this evening are our clients, some for many years. In this increasingly unpredictable business environment, we are sure of only one thing: we will continue to work with you, together, facing the challenges and opportunities that the future has to offer.

Our mission is to make our people and clients successful. To us success can be a variety of things, but one element is always vital: trust. Not only in yourself, but also trust in the people around you; clients and colleagues. It makes you resilient in the face of ever-increasing change, no matter your strategy, market, or competition.

We strive to work collaboratively on key legal solutions for businesses moving forward. One way of doing that is by preparing our clients for new environmental, social and governance (ESG) legislation. The developments in sustainability legislation are moving at lightning speed. Navigating through these changes can be challenging. That is why we have introduced the Houthoff ESG Compass. Within a matter of minutes this tool offers you the insight into which (upcoming) directives are applicable for your organisation.

The future provides more than enough challenges, having someone on your side with advice that takes you further helps gaining more of that vital element. It all begins with trust when making people and clients successful.

Congratulations to all individuals celebrated in the GC Powerlist: Benelux 2023. At Houthoff, we wish all legal professionals great success in all that lies ahead.

We are extremely proud to be one of the three sponsors for yet another year of The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist: Benelux Teams and to join The Legal 500 in recognising Benelux’s top general counsel and their teams. It is an honour to co-host the GC Powerlist Benelux event and to congratulate all legal teams and their GCs who have been instrumental in bringing their companies to the next level by providing them with the necessary tools to succeed in their goals.

In the recent years, businesses have been increasingly forced to rethink their way of working and approaching challenges and planning. We have moved from simpler times where we saw less and slower changes, where organisations and legal teams faced a world that was more reliable and could anticipate risks and challenges based on old assumptions, and therefore achieve a simpler vision of the future, to a new VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment, where geopolitical issues, globalisation and new and disruptive technologies are bringing their share of intricacies and are impacting all industries, making risk analysis and future planning much more complex.

In this new landscape where uncertainty has become more apparent, legal teams need to have their finger on the pulse and be even more strategic and future-oriented; they need to assimilate mass amounts of information in shorter times, they must rapidly evaluate how to act and react all while under time pressure to manage more risks and complexity. They need to go far beyond those old assumptions and can no longer use only past experiences to plan and assess the future, but need to take into consideration a whole array of (new) elements to bring their organisation a real added-value as trusted business advisors.

Their role has therefore been profoundly redefined, and they need to become even more agile in a dynamic, rapidly changing legal market, assess fluctuations, anticipate risks and challenges and how to cope with them and evolve and adapt with the changes rather than being disrupted by them.

In short, their resilience and adaptability must be bulletproof.

The legal teams and GC’s present tonight have certainly impressed us by their adaptability and ability to accept change, and their capacity to go the extra-mile to be able to support their businesses in meeting challenges and embracing new opportunities.

Alongside our friend firms Arendt and Houthoff, Liedekerke is proud to praise – through the GC Powerlist: Benelux Teams – those teams and their GCs who are visionaries and are instrumental in enabling their businesses to leverage the changes to succeed as organisations. We are delighted to not only be a legal advisor for them but a true business partner who will continue to accompany them and guide them in these endeavours.