What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

Over the past year, our legal and compliance function has supported several strategic initiatives that required close coordination across multiple jurisdictions. These included complex commercial agreements, corporate restructuring projects, and cross-border compliance reviews aimed at ensuring regulatory consistency throughout the region.

We also played a key role in implementing enhanced compliance frameworks to strengthen governance and operational resilience. Many of these projects involved collaboration with the Group Legal Directorate and external counsel, ensuring alignment between global standards and local execution.

Beyond the transactional work, I am particularly proud of the team’s contribution to internal process improvement, including digitalising certain contract management flows and reinforcing the culture of compliance across all countries under our coordination.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?  

During periods of instability, one must focus on three key priorities: ensuring business continuity, safeguarding compliance, and supporting transparent communication with management and stakeholders. It is essential to provide pragmatic, business-oriented legal guidance while keeping decisions firmly anchored in ethics and long-term sustainability.

Equally important is the human side: maintaining calm, supporting the team, and fostering collaboration with the Group Legal Directorate and business leaders. A resilient organisation depends as much on people’s confidence as on procedures, and the legal function plays a central role in both.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

Our starting point is always to assess whether the matter requires highly specialised expertise, significant cross-border coordination, or independent external validation. Routine or business-integrated legal work is managed internally, while areas such as complex litigation, competition law, or emerging regulatory topics often call for external counsel involvement.

When selecting and evaluating external partners, we focus on three key dimensions: technical excellence, responsiveness, and practical understanding of the business context. We value advisers who can combine deep legal knowledge with pragmatic, solution-oriented advice that supports decision-making.

Performance is also measured by the quality of collaboration – how efficiently counsel work with our internal team and contribute to building long-term knowledge within the organisation. For us, external counsel are not just service providers, but strategic partners who help extend our reach and strengthen our regional capabilities.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

I am deeply passionate about integrity and ethical leadership – both within the legal profession and in the broader business environment. I believe that compliance and ethics are not just regulatory requirements, but essential elements of trust and long-term sustainability.

Beyond the professional sphere, I am also committed to supporting the development of young legal professionals. Mentorship and knowledge sharing play a crucial role in shaping future leaders who approach law with both competence and conscience. Seeing new generations embrace integrity and accountability as core values is something that continually inspires me.