About

As general counsel for the highly significant energy management strand of Siemens’ diversified operations, Dr Yves Bock has a team of 33 reporting in to him, a broad set of responsibilities and a long list of career successes on his résumé up to this point. He describes a number of projects that moulded him during the course of his early career: ‘As a junior lawyer I had the opportunity from day one to advise on huge infrastructure projects. This allowed me to learn a great deal about project management and the fundamentals of project business rather quickly as a result’. His later career brought on different challenges and new learning experiences: ‘As a senior lawyer I became responsible for some of the most complex transactions and disputes in my company and gained a great deal of exposure to senior executives. By this I learned to reduce the most complex legal issues to the essentials. Later on, in one of my leadership positions, I was supporting a large business in a crisis. This was challenging from a personal perspective in terms of workload, and from a professional perspective in terms of leading a team through uncertain times’. He has also had a huge effect on the development and improvement of the legal function as a whole. Dr Bock explains how he has ‘driven focus on core legal work in the department’, which has ‘helped the company to develop from a more rules-based company to a value-based one’, having empowered other business units to take charge of matters without always looking for sign off from the legal team. Dr Bock’s professional successes are underpinned by his core philosophy, to ‘never compromise on your own set of values, and remain independent at all times’.