About

Daimler’s legal and regulatory compliance team has been extremely active of late, developing a number of comprehensive internal compliance structures over the past few years. In 2016, as associate general counsel and head of the legal and regulatory compliance team Florian Adt explains, it ‘completed the review of a global antitrust compliance programme encompassing numerous audits globally – what we put in place in terms of compliance, I am happy to say, is not only state-of-the-art but is probably setting a benchmark’. He went into further detail on some of the other innovations within this compliance programme. ‘We have created a uniform, globally valid standard on how to assess antitrust matters’, he explains, ‘which has been implemented among all countries we operate in. As part of this, we have set up an advisor hotline, guides, checklists and other practical support resources available at all times via a mobile application’. This has been integrated into a wide-ranging training programme – which the team is ‘very proud of’ according to Adt – and a very intensive monitoring effort aimed at setting standards. The team has also implemented ‘early warning systems in terms of legislation change which will allow us to align our guidance when new risks are developed’.

He continues,’The result is an extra layer of risk-management abilities. The foundation for these processes is an unusual and forward-thinking team structure. My team comprises a number of people from different fields. Besides lawyers with a classic legal education, we have people with auditing, accounting and business administration backgrounds. With such an interdisciplinary team, you can provide comprehensive advice that doesn’t stop at solving a legal problem, but also takes into account strategic and operational issues, while also supporting the company’s organisation in the implementation of the advice given. To conclude: the legal regulatory compliance team protects the company and shapes the future by capturing business opportunities together with the business.’ Daimler’s legal and regulatory compliance team operates within a group-wide in-house legal structure, led by vice president and group general counsel Dr Thomas Laubert.