Ritva Sotamaa – GC Powerlist
GC Powerlist Logo
United Kingdom 2021

Consumer products

Ritva Sotamaa

Chief legal officer and group secretary | Unilever

Download

United Kingdom 2021

legal500.com/gc-powerlist/

Recommended Individual

Ritva Sotamaa

Chief legal officer and group secretary | Unilever

Team size: 500 Major legal advisers: Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, DLA Piper, Linklaters, Mayer Brown In March 2019, a group of 65 GCs spanning major...

View Powerlist
Ritva Sotamaa - United Kingdom 2019

Retail and Consumer Products | Unilever

Team size: 500 Major law firms used: Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Linklaters ‘Everything is just getting faster,’ says Unilever chief legal officer and group secretary Ritva Sotamaa. ‘The...

View Powerlist

About

Team size: 430

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last year?

Undoubtedly, the unification of Unilever’s dual-headed legal structure. It was the largest cross-border merger in the UK and was closed in November 2020, a month before UK’s exit from the European Union. The project was highly complex. It had to be executed in a tight timeline and resulted in the creation of one of UK’s highest market cap FTSE companies – it is currently valued at about £110bn.

What were the main steps you took to protect the business once it became clear we were in the midst of an unprecedented challenge?

We based our pandemic response on several pillars. Firstly, we focused on our people, their safety and wellbeing, and introduced policies and protocols that protected and helped them in changing circumstances around the world. Secondly, we focused on our operational health, ensuring that our products, essential goods like food and hygiene products (eg, soaps, sanitizers) were available to consumers, and that our supply chain and sales operations continued to serve consumers around the world under the strong protocols mentioned. Finally, we insisted on helping communities, so we collaborated with other organisations, and made donations to those most in need.

How have you maintained your team’s cohesion when you have been unable to see them face-to-face as regularly as usual?

The Covid-19 pandemic has ‘democratised’ engagement across the world and has unexpectedly brought our global legal community closer together. Everyone of course misses the human interaction, but we have introduced monthly virtual global townhalls to discuss our strategic agenda and initiatives; during our ‘tea breaks’ we discuss well-being in small, randomly selected cohorts. We have created a Yammer channel where we share news and updates; it is used by our global networks to keep up our knowledge. We wanted to make sure that everyone had a voice and contributed to our annual learning week and an annual legal forum, so we successfully provided an engaging and inclusive environment for our global team. In addition, the legal leadership team does virtual visits to different parts of the organisation, prompting interaction with other teams and their respective business leaders.

Did the Brexit deal reached at the end of 2020 give you and your business greater clarity for the future?

Unilever operates globally, our products are sold in 190 countries around world, thus Brexit did not have a significant impact on our global operations.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving over the next few years?

The world evolves faster than ever before. Learning and skills development will be in the centre of Unilever’s strategy, so we maintain a leading-edge capability and the capacity to impactfully advise and steer the business. Take the constant development of digitisation, for instance: on the one hand, new technology allows people to work differently, to focus on more strategic outcomes for the business while automating routine work and introducing digitally enabled processes. On the other hand, it requires our teams to maintain a strong learning agenda to have the skillset to support the business that procures, sells and markets differently in a fast-digitising environment. It can require significant change management in the ways of working of in-house teams in the coming years.

Related Powerlists

Carla Hernandez

General Legal Counsel Venezuela and Ecuador

Unilever

View Powerlist

Newman de Faria Debs

Vice president, global head of legal, powerhouses

Unilever

View Powerlist

Christina Vasilopoulou

General counsel for East Europe

Unilever

View Powerlist

Emmanuelle Couic-Dubois

General counsel

Unilever

View Powerlist

Carla Hernandez

General Legal Counsel Venezuela and Ecuador

Unilever

View Powerlist

Julieta Crouzel

Senior legal manager Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay

Unilever

View Powerlist

Noris Calderon

Senior legal manager

Unilever

View Powerlist

Newman Debs

General counsel Latam

Unilever

View Powerlist