About

Overseeing legal matters pertaining to New Zealand’s largest publically listed company by market cap, the in-house legal function at Auckland International Airport contains five lawyers employed to overlook specific parts of the business in addition to a legal executive. The legal team is led by general counsel and company secretary Scott Weenink, who explains that the function sits ‘across the entire span of the business’ and is a key element in the business through ‘promoting cross business unit thinking and co-operation’ assisting with collaborating and bridging different business units of New Zealand’s largest airport during a period of ‘great change’. Hand-in-hand with the business goal of building the “airport of the future”, the legal team is expected to deal with a myriad of risks and threats to the airports existing and future projects, Weenink explains that the team is ‘a key part of identifying opportunities and risk for the business and helping ensure that the business is best placed to take advantage of those opportunities and also to manage the new and increased risks and threats.’ A significant presence in all the main transactions of the company, the team has offered advice and support on a number of different activities that define the recent history of the airport, including, but not limited to: ‘An international terminal and airfield upgrade, the development of the commercial property business and the development of a new five star hotel at the airport’. This work has been achieved within the context of several innovations rolled out by the team as Weenink comments that reporting and governance processes have seen a ‘marked improvement over the last 18 months’. He also highlights the creation of a “virtual secondee” arrangement with service providers which has ‘enabled the team to farm out “low level” work at competitive prices to enable the team to focus on complex and commercial matters which is where there can be more “value add” to internal clients’. The culture of the team is developed with what Weenink calls a ‘team first’ mentality, where members are ‘encouraged to put team interests ahead of individual interests at all times’, interacting with senior management ‘on a regular basis’ but also putting ‘customer first thinking at the forefront of all we do’. Noted in particular for their contributions to the team are Greg Milner-White, Morag Haliburton and Justine Hollows.