Features Automotive

An attorney who spends his spare time painting abstract art or playing guitar is not afraid to take things in different directions. Or so it seems as Old World Industries approaches its 50th anniversary, with Richard Stevens acting as an artist of change helping to guide the Northbrook, Illinois, company down unexpected new paths, from […]

General counsels and chief legal officers often claim additional roles—executive vice president and corporate secretary being two of the most popular. Multiple titles sure look good on a letterhead or LinkedIn page, after all. It’s a club that Victor Manuel Manzano Macias, who helps oversee the Mexican operations of international tire heavyweight Pirelli, is proud […]

Sensors that ensure your vehicle stays centered in the lane. Cameras that help drivers pull off the most daunting of parallel parking jobs. Bluetooth technology to help drivers keep their phone conversations hands-free. And that’s before we even get to driverless and autonomous cars, with software designed to follow roads, read traffic signals, and spot […]

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the extent to which some people go to imitate someone else’s patented products can have Edward Burns shaking his head. Automotive wheels are not easy items to infringe upon, he remarks. Especially when they are big, molded and branded with recognized names, and usually sold four […]

You could say the spin cycle has turned out more than OK for Brendan O’Connor. Or, to be precise, the spinoff cycle. For most of 2018, O’Connor, then the assistant general counsel of mergers and acquisitions at Honeywell International Inc.’s headquarters in northern New Jersey, was entrusted with fronting the company’s spinning off of its […]

She had all the makings to be Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, and General Counsel of this mega used-car dealership chain in Florida, Ejola Cook was told in early 2015 by Mark Fischer, the founder and boss of Off Lease Only Inc. Whether Cook would have enough work to keep busy if she left a […]

Flat tire? Dead battery? Overheated engine? Need a tow? Been in an accident? Just call the number on the card and within an hour’s time, one of AAA’s providers will likely be beside your troubled vehicle. Or maybe your house, if it’s been damaged by fire or falling limbs, and you had the foresight to […]

Luis Enriquez de Rivera Morales answers the call amid the commotion in Mexico City’s international airport, where he’s waiting to board a flight for a press conference with Martin Orozco Sandoval, governor of the state of Aguascalientes. For that’s where Enriquez’s employer, Continental Mexico, will build a new central electronics plant of 8,000 square meters, […]

Eureka moments are typically talked about in revelatory terms—those lightbulb flashes when clarity and creativity combine to illuminate the path ahead. Dante Benedettini only remembers the mild panic. As he sat in a boardroom meeting, listening to a group of senior management clients wield high-level business terms he didn’t understand, the realization hit him like […]

It’s a fairly standard line from a general counsel: You have one client and that’s the company itself. Kelvin Sellers, who heads legal as well as internal audit for Interstate Batteries Inc., can recite that statement as well as anyone, but the upbeat 43-year-old man may just take it to another level. That one client, […]