Key team members: Joris Andersen, Head of Legal, International, Director; Frank Thøgersen, Head of Legal, M&A; Christian Nielsen, Head of Competition Law; Kasper Riis Hansen, Head of Legal Operations; Abii Adesanya, Head of Legal, Rest of World; Karina Floor Bock, Head of Legal, Supply Chain/Procurement.

Team Size: 40

Jurisdictions your role covers: All approximately 140 markets where Arla products are sold. In addition to Arla’s headquarters in Denmark, the team includes lawyers qualified in Sweden, the UK, Germany, Lebanon, and Nigeria, with support from internal lawyers in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and China.

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

In April 2025, Arla signed an agreement to merge with DMK Deutsches Milchkontor, Germany’s largest dairy cooperative. Large parts of Arla’s organisation, and a substantial portion of the legal team, have been heavily involved in this critical and complex matter. If completed, this will be the largest merger in Arla’s history and will require significant effort over the coming years. Ensuring a successful integration will be a key priority for the legal department and Arla colleagues across the business.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

We aim to maintain and build strong legal acumen across our teams and prefer to handle most matters in-house. We engage external counsel where: we require expertise not available internally (by jurisdiction or specialist area), or we need additional resources to manage large, ad hoc projects alongside day-to-day work.

We have a strong collaboration with our external advisors and generally work with them to understand and learn from their work just as we expect our external counsel to understand and build knowledge of Arla’s company, structure and values to reflect this in the advice provided.