This month Lawyer Monthly had the pleasure of speaking with Mollie Stoker, General Counsel at Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS), the conceived company from when Suntory Beverage & Food, the world's 3rd largest soft drinks company, acquired Lucozade and Ribena.
Mollie Stoker’s can-do style has helped build a highly visible and well-regarded legal team from scratch. She sits on the board of the new soft drinks company. Here she talks us through that process, the goals of LRS, the challenges in managing a strong team of lawyers, and the personal and professional rewards that keep the team driven and passionate about the business.
What does your role at LRS involve? What are the kinds of tasks you engage in daily, and what’s out of the ordinary?
No two days are ever the same at Lucozade Ribena Suntory. My day to day job involves overseeing, supporting and enabling the legal team, ensuring they’re focused on their respective roles and that ultimately, all of our work aligns with LRS’ overall business priorities and objectives. This year, our focus has been on developing strategic ways of business partnering within LRS and refining our strategic vision for intellectual property matters.
We’ve continued to work on developing strong incident management procedures and pulling together cross-functional teams to ensure all work streams during an incident are handled in a streamlined and effective way. Setting up the corporate governance and risk management structures from scratch around the ongoing business has been an out of the ordinary task but now the legal team are likely to engage in corporate governance and risk management matters on a regular basis. In addition to my usual role, I sit on a number of committees, including chairing the Risk Management Committee and sitting on the Ethics and Compliance committee.
Creating an ethical culture within LRS is something that’s extremely important to my team. We want to engage the hearts and minds of all our employees to encourage them to do things in the right way, both legally and morally. In a way, I think of it as sprinkling magic dust on what could be perceived as dull legal documents, processes and procedures, to ensure that we reflect the vibrant culture of the company whilst keeping us safe from a legal perspective.
Who do you work with day to day, and what kind of relationships do you cultivate within the company?
We are committed to a ‘one team’ environment at LRS and do not want silos to exist. The legal team are involved in, and have access to, almost every function in the business, so we are lucky enough to have a unique perspective on how everything sits within the wider business. My team’s role is to help make things happen and ensure the sustainability of our business plans. To achieve this, developing strong relationships is key; you can never spend too much time sitting down for a coffee with colleagues, learning about each person as an individual and how you can best work together. Within the UK and Ireland legal team there are two IP lawyers, two commercial lawyers, a professional support lawyer and myself. We are also about to take on a trainee-lawyer from our procurement team, which is an exciting addition to the legal team, where we will benefit from his expertise on handling suppliers and the realities of managing short and long term implications of contracts, as much as he will benefit from learning key legal skills.
What are the primary compliance and regulatory considerations you have to make on behalf of Lucozade Ribena Suntory? What have been the most recent priorities for your legal team?
At LRS, we have a strong, highly regarded regulatory team who are experts in food law and who the legal team work closely with. Our primary compliance and regulatory considerations therefore revolve around matters such as marketing and advertising law, competition law and anti-bribery and corruption laws. We are also working with our European colleagues to ready the business for the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation. Our consumers are at the heart of everything we do, and accordingly ensuring our brands continue to be trusted is absolutely critical. Therefore, if anything occurs or could occur that has the potential to impact on or affect the reputation of our brands, this is a key priority for the legal team.
How are these considerations managed on a global level, and throughout the entirety of the company’s ranks?
The Suntory Beverage and Food group is an international business that has allowed LRS and its sister companies to develop their global brands in a way that is best for the global business. However, they also work on an understanding that local territories differ and local consumers have different needs across the globe, therefore from a legal perspective, we have been supported to create the right legal frameworks and corporate governance structures for our local territories whilst always working closely with our regional and parent company colleagues to ensure the existence of as cohesive arrangements in the group as possible.
What environmental and nutritional concerns do you have to prioritise in regards to the company’s products?
Ultimately, our business has a strong desire to create a sustainable future for itself, to take into account the interests of all its stakeholders and to seek out new opportunities while always mitigating potential risks. For example, we look at Brexit as an opportunity to review existing regulations that may or may not be retained as part of UK legislation in future, and to then have a voice in discussing any changes that may be appropriate for our business and the wider environment.
Having built this team ‘from scratch’, what would you say has been the biggest difficulty since the inception of the new company? How did you help navigate this?
I am fortunate to have an amazing team at LRS, all of whom have the right fit for the company culture. It’s been incredible to have had the freedom to set the team up in the way I thought best, with the right people in the right way. Ultimately, LRS wants to be the best place to work, and to do that, we want to inspire our employees and team members to realise their potential and what they can do for this company.
I believe the biggest challenge for any legal team, new or otherwise, is overcoming the perception of being the ‘no police’. I wanted to try and build legal in a different way. I want the team to be seen as enablers, helping to write the creative process from the very beginning, ensuring that ideas and structures are robust, not just providing the rubber stamp at the end. I wanted legal to take its place at the front line, and only through doing this can you have a team that feel inspired, part of the LRS story, and therefore motivated to deliver their best.
Despite certain challenges, what are the overall rewards, both personal and professional, of your GC role? What is your favourite part of the job?
I’ve surprised myself with this position in the reward and enjoyment that I’ve taken in a role of leadership. I love being part of the executive committee; having exposure to those with different expertise, learning about best practice in the way other parts of the company work, and using that knowledge to enhance legal delivery to the business.
Are you ever involved in IP or PI issues as a result of the company’s products? Do these often have simple or complex resolutions?
As our brands are so well known, and our manufacturing processes dedicated to the pursuit of quality and safety, the need to solve difficult occurrences in these areas is relatively rare. We’re always keen on finding them and/or dealing with them before they become an issue, and then having efficient processes and procedures to deal with them should they occur. We mostly handle these issues internally, not only because we have the capabilities to do so, but also because we know our brands and products best, and we work closely with the other functions, which enables us to have effective, streamlined and organised processes that are best all round for the business and for our consumers.
How would you say the ‘Internet of Things’ is changing the priorities and considerations of in-house counsels around the world? In regards to this, what risk management steps would you define as paramount to the safe future running of the business?
From a legal perspective, the internet of things is a new area of risk, largely unregulated, that we will need to ensure we are up to date with as regards the important legal issues such as confidentiality, data privacy and cyber security. However, it also provides huge and exciting opportunities which can help not only make our products easier to buy, but also allow us to be better connected with our consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their needs. It may also provide opportunities to track and monitor our products in a way we haven’t been able to so far, contributing to making our products even safer for our customers and consumers. So the legal team will need to lean into this to enable the business to make the most out of these opportunities in as safe and robust way as possible.
When you first jumped into this role, what were your personal goals and professional ambitions? Have these changed since the inception of the new company in 2014?
When I joined the team, I thought I would mainly be engaged in only the legal issues that arise, but I have actually had the opportunity to substantially develop my skills in leadership across the business, in management and in strategic thought and vision. Ultimately, I am able to work with a cross-functional team, supporting them with all the good things that arise with having legal skills such as the ability to be cohesive, thoughtful and incisive. We aim for excellence, not only when it comes to execution and delivering results, but also more broadly across the business.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
The LRS motto taken with pride from our Japanese owners – Yatte Minahare (roughly translated as “go for it!”) - is at the heart of our DNA, and something the legal team happily applies in its approach to challenges by not only seeing the opportunities as much as the risks in those moments, but also by working with agility, passion and commitment to find the best solutions.
