Team size: 4 now 3

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

I supported the M&A team in the approval of transactions of more than $7bn (Just Eat Takeaway, Despegar and La Centrale) and oversaw two corporate actions: share split and share repurchase programs, ensuring compliance with the listing rules and exchanges.

We published the Naspers and Prosus annual reports compliant with South African, Dutch, and EU regulations, most notably compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The reports were issued as unqualified by the auditors. Additionally, a program has been implemented to align the Naspers annual report with King V and the various amendments to the South African Companies Act. 

We proactively embedded and adopted the use of AI in support of the group’s AI first strategy. We have also adopted the approach of moving faster without adding complexity, simplifying processes, and automating and promoting the use of AI across the group.

We have unlocked the power of AI at scale. The result: we have automated a number of our processes and relied on internal and external AI tools. We have also developed our own internal agents to assist with legislative updates on the development of market capitalisation calculations and related tasks.

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

Managing legal outputs during periods of instability or crisis requires strategic planning, operational flexibility, and clear prioritisation. We assist in coordinating a cross-jurisdictional approach, including a multidisciplinary team of experts with a well-developed and articulated corporate governance framework and communication strategy. This enables clear legal guidance to business units on operational adaptation requirements and transparent stakeholder communication, including key and close engagement with regulators. We have adopted a front-footed approach through immediate assessment and a triage approach, to prioritise critical issues that could impact business continuity, with a clear escalation pathway to the board for oversight and update on urgent matters. Central to this process is identifying the appropriate external counsel and ensuring ongoing regulatory compliance to ensure reporting (internal and external) and contractual obligations are met.

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact on how your legal team works at this time?

Yes, we have also implemented tools and developed agents and led the use of AI in curating, disseminating and assessing board packs. We have been involved in approving the AI governance framework, and policy inclusive of the responsible and ethical use of AI.

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

The benefit of working at a technology company is that embracing and leading on technology matters is a necessity. In conjunction with the Global head of Privacy and her team, the impact of the AI Act has been assessed and supported by an AI policy, training and board endorsement. We work with highly qualified consummate professionals who are global experts, working on a cross jurisdictional basis to make the transition seamless and aligned to the group’s AI Framework. This is a key cog in ensuring we remain compliant, which is of significant relevance given my role as the information officer for Naspers. We have also been front footed in terms of engaging with the regulator by completing globally recognised accreditations on privacy with iapp.

Trends for 2026

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Navigating volatility through AI-driven insights and the adoption of AI tools and AI driven insights and delivery of outputs for better data analysis, risk identification, and strategic decision-making, while simultaneously managing new risks from AI itself, focusing on ethical implementation and regulatory compliance and managing the perceived risk of AI Washing. This, together with data driven governance and a focus on culture and ethics and cross-operational engagement on skills across the group, is key.