About

As general counsel for Norway, Matthias Geiger is responsible for eight legal professionals and one compliance professional in Norway. In addition to this role, he assumed the responsibilities of GC for Denmark in April 2015. As general counsel for Denmark, he has the further responsibility over a team of 29 legal and non-legal professionals. ‘Looking back to 2009 when I took over as GC for Norway, the legal department was not functioning well. Internal resources were insufficient both in quality and quantity, and there was no control over the retention of outside counsel’. This enabled him to restructure the whole system, any lawyers and contract managers which had previously been employed by other parts of the organisation were integrated into the legal function. ‘The mission of the department has been clarified for all employees. Members of the legal department now spend more time on risk mitigation and less time on administrative tasks’. Today, the Siemens Norway legal team is highly respected (both internally and externally) as a state of the art department. ‘To get there, I was so lucky to hire three talented lawyers from well-known Norwegian law firms who now form the core of my team’. The hardest challenge for Geiger was when Siemens Norway was charged with fraud by the Norwegian government. ‘Due to a media campaign, the public opinion was against Siemens. In 2011 Siemens was acquitted, and awarded damages in the form of reimbursement of legal expenses. This was a fantastic result for Siemens Norway and the legal department which selected the external counsel’. As Geiger spends more of his time with the Danish team as well, there will surely be more improvements on his agenda.