About

Compagnie des Alpes occupies an important position in the French tourism industry, being responsible for the operation and management of a number of highly popular ski resorts in the French Alps along with a number of other leisure attractions, including well-known Parc Astérix. These endeavours are highly lucrative, and netted Compagnie des Alpes €720m in revenue for 2016, which provides employment for over 4,600 individuals. Group general counsel and company secretary Philippe Jutard is clear that the company’s foremost goal is to ‘provide relevant advice and efficient and business-oriented assistance to all our internal customers’, as part of a more general business partner role. Jutard is proud of ‘the international development of the Group in terms of consultancy and assistance services, particularly in Russia and China’, with the company having ‘had to adapt to new ways of working in systems of law quite different from ours’. On top of this support work, Jutard and his team have taken a lead role in the group’s financial reorganisation efforts, as he explains: ‘We have just finalised the refinancing of the group with an original mix of banking and bond issues; a depreciable term loan, a bilateral depreciable term credit and other agreements have been made’. This has allowed the legal team to have a major impact on the company’s overall financial well-being in a highly important initiative for Compagnie des Alpes. Jutard outlines the unique challenges faced by the legal team as such: ‘The Compagnie des Alpes Group is the only actor to have two separate leisure activities. Our two main activities, the exploitation of ski areas and the use of recreational parks, are very complementary, but they fall under two different systems of law. The former are exploited under contracts governed by public law, while the latter are governed by private law. These two activities generate a variety of subjects, requiring the lawyers to be highly versatile’.