Formerly an assistant professor at the University of Leuven and a litigation specialist at the Brussels-based law firm Altius, Hans Brems first moved to Athens in 2001 when he became Sun Microsystems’s first regional counsel in the area. In this role he combined the general counsel role for subsidiaries in Greece, Turkey and Israel, and took on business oversight roles for the Balkans and Central Asia. He then progressed to expanded roles as a senior legal counsel and then assistant general counsel of the company’s global software and OEM legal group for Europe, continuing this EMEA-wide role after Sun Microsystems’s takeover by Oracle Corporation.

He is now in the position of managing counsel, and is therefore responsible for all legal matters throughout the EMEA region relating to the Java global business unit and the communications global business unit. He places the creation and establishment of the legal function in the East-Mediterranean region among his top career highlights: ‘Before I joined Sun, the company had no in-house counsel in the region, and legal matters were dealt with ad-hoc by outside counsel or other branches. Trying to overcome some initial reluctance by local business management, I worked intensively with management and sales teams in all countries of the region and of all business lines, to gain trust and confidence, to demonstrate value and to be established as a trusted adviser and business partner’. More recently, he lists his work in support of the global communications business unit, which was dealing with a particularly complex backlog of legacy contracts, as being particularly rewarding.

‘We convinced Oracle internally of certain specific features of this business unit and managed to convince customers of the value of our products and services’, he explains. ‘After getting to know the scope of the problems, we had some good wins and, as such, we have contributed to bringing back motivation and a proactive attitude in the now-growing business unit’.