About

Groupe Renault’s legal team is based at the Boulogne-Billancourt headquarters and the Renault Technocentre, and is led by senior vice president, group general counsel Jean-Benoît Devauges and consists of six key teams. Deputy general counsel Catherine Brel leads the digital, data, connected and autonomous driving team – which plays an increasing role in the organisation – while Nathalie Debeir, also a deputy general counsel, leads the regionally-organised international M&A and commercial transactions legal team. Completing the line-up, Didier Hillion is director of the intellectual property team, and Stéphane Jaffré joined Renault in early 2019 as director, corporate governance, securities and financial law. Christophe Mistral is in charge of the compliance and litigation practices while Anne-Sophie Mauduit manages legal affairs for France. Finally, Isabelle Dervaux-Blavet coordinates the strategy and the development of the legal function. The role of the in-house legal department has been increasingly important of late, illustrated by the group general counsel’s direct reporting line to the CEO which has provided enhanced visibility to the department. Devauges provided some further information on what the team has been focusing on lately: ‘Among many strategic issues, our legal department has played a central role in dealing with the re-imposition of US sanctions against Iran, helping the company’s senior management navigate through new challenges, like the separation of the functions of chairman and CEO, the structuring of Renault’s projects in China and the closing of the complex, multibillion-Roubles recapitalisation of AVTOVAZ, Russia’s largest automobile manufacturer. Legal has also played a key role in the global implementation of major regulatory changes in terms of data protection or anti-bribery. In France, we have helped to structure the ambitious autonomous driving tests launched by Renault, for instance in Rouen and Saclay’. When discussing the team’s success and what has contributed to this, Michaell Smith, alliance general counsel for Russia and Renault’s managing counsel for Eurasia, described the culture as ‘working comprehensively as a team to provide assertive, decisive and commercially-driven transactional, litigation and regulatory support to the business’, and said that, going forward, ‘we believe the in-house legal role will continue to gain importance, closer to the role typically found in Anglo-American corporate culture’.