Groupe Renault Hires New Legal Chief Following Strategy Shift

Groupe Renault has hired Quitterie de Pelleport as its new group general counsel and senior vice president, replacing the French car manufacturer’s former legal chief Jean-Benoit Devauges.

De Pelleport officially assumed her new role on Feb. 1 and will report to Groupe Renault CEO Luca de Meo, Renault corporate press officer Astrid de Latude confirmed on Tuesday. De Pelleport joins Renault after a decade with Belgian chemical company Solvay, where she was most recently group general counsel and head of legal and M&A, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Groupe Renault, based near Paris, partners closely with Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors and comprises business units Renault, Dacia-LADA, Alpine, and MOBILIZE. In recent years, this alliance of automakers faced international scrutiny over the financial misconduct of Nissan’s former chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn.

The automobile industry faced a significant slowdown last year due to the pandemic as car factories idled and lockdowns kept customers at home. Groupe Renault cited Covid-19 as the cause of a 21.3% decrease in sales for 2020 when it reported its global sales results on Jan. 12.

Renault last month unveiled a new strategic plan, “Renaulution,” which aims to make the company more efficient and profitable.

“We will feed our brands’ strengths, each with their own clear, differentiated territories. We’ll move from a car company working with tech to a tech company working with cars,” de Meo said, introducing the strategy.

Renaulution includes goals such as reducing fixed costs by about $2.42 billion within five years and boosting vehicle sustainability.

Before joining Solvay and Renault, de Pelleport was an associate at DLA Piper and Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. Devauges, her predecessor, worked for Renault for over a decade in total and also spent five years with Nissan North America.