Corporate Social Responsibility

IBSA legal affairs: the importance of sustainable governance

Environmental, social and governance criteria, commonly abbreviated as ESG, determine whether sustainability is truly a pillar of a company’s business model.

The role that the Legal Affairs department plays in IBSA entails more than just overseeing legal compliance; it means actively promoting a key concept: sustainable governance, which goes beyond protecting the company from risks, by upholding the principles of lawfulness, transparency, traceability and preventing corruption, and extends to the positive development of corporate identity based on best practices and therefore capable of attracting investors, instilling loyalty in customers and suppliers and cultivating a better work environment.

4cLegal was the first Italian company to apply the beauty contest model to legal procurement, while IBSA, guided by its Legal Affairs department, was one of the first pharmaceutical companies to implement this model, a decision that substantially raised the sustainability index of its governance. In short, a beauty contest is a competitive procedure that helps companies select lawyers more objectively and knowledgeably based on an assessment of the best service quality for the expenditure budget of the company seeking legal assistance. The fact that it is digital makes the process more traceable and transparent.

IBSA legal affairs: sustainable governance

Elisabetta Racca, lawyer and Head of Legal Affairs at IBSA, notes, “We use the digital beauty contest to assign legal projects to lawyers as a sustainable governance measure in our department. This digital, traceable and transparent competitive procedure is a best practice that offers three advantages: preventing corruption in a sensitive area, optimising legal costs in accordance with the best governance principles and significant reputational returns in the wider framework of business conduct with third-party service providers.”

The company’s in-house lawyers provided vital assistance to the Information Technology department in the development of the company’s e-learning portal for the management of data processing and privacy. The Supply Chain department also lent crucial support in the implementation of the Suppliers Portal, which – in the wake of the positive experience with Legal Procurement – will make it possible to manage the supply chain digitally, improving compliance.

Our Sustainable Governance is not just a label - it is truly a guiding principle based on best practices.