About

Dr Martin Fröhlich joined the Krüger Group in 2015, a business with a €2bn turnover and 4,500 employees in several business units and legal entities around the world. Upon his arrival the organisation had no legal department at all and so had to rely on external advisors only. It was here that Dr Fröhlich had the opportunity and the exciting challenge of setting-up a legal department and implementing a legal structure, legal processes and knowledge management. Reflecting on this critical task, Dr Fröhlich explains, ‘We had to gently “educate” the organisation in the sense that a legal department is no blocker to the business but a true business partner and efficient service provider that adds value and offers benefit to the entire organisation’. Thanks to Dr Fröhlich, after three years in the Group, the legal department is not seen as a “blocker to the business” but a true business partner and advisor in which stakeholders, in particular the CEO and executive team have full trust in them. Before joining the Krüger Group as an in-house lawyer, Dr Fröhlich had been advising the company as an external legal advisor at Freshfields, where he assisted the Group on its strategic partnership with Starbucks. Dr Fröhlich takes great pride in meeting the needs of a complex, diversified business organisation on a daily basis, ranging from highly complex M&A transactions, over the day-to-day business of an internationally active and consciously growing diversified group spontaneously arising in a family-owned business. Claiming the aforementioned as some of his career highlights Dr Fröhlich says: ‘These milestones have moulded me to work even more efficient and solution-orientated than I already had as an external counsel in order to meet all demands and expectations’.