About

After a career in litigation at the highest level in India and the UK and in-house roles at firms such as at Bechtel Group, Rashmi Kathpalia joined Technip India (now TechnipFMC Group) in early 2015. She serves as its senior vice president, country head of its legal department. Her department looks after legal, corporate secretarial, risk, insurance, ethics, compliance and contract management matters among others. On her role Kathpalia says, ‘as compared to Bechtel’s work, my role here is far wider as a senior vice president, since I am part of the leadership team of India and a direct stakeholder in not just the management but also the growth of the company. In the past three-plus years, I have found myself in situations wherein I have had to utilise almost all the skills I have inculcated in the past 27 years. I am now developing new ones to deal with situations that arise out of my current role’. Kathpalia takes responsibility for advising and directing on legal issues raised in commercial transactions or the contract negotiation process; supervises counsel on transactions, litigations, deals and compliance related matters and provides advice to the local board of directors. She is responsible for several initiatives to drive operational efficiency for the legal department, including, currently working on setting-up a captive offshore legal shared services centre. As the country compliance officer, Kathpalia advises on governance and assurance issues and drafts Technip India’s internal policies to maintain excellent standards of corporate governance including advising on M&A and joint venture activity. Recent projects she has closed include contracts for revamps of two full EPC Fertilizer (ammonia-urea) projects for Technip India and Technip France, a consortium with L&T, a first in the fertiliser industry for TechnipFMC valued at US$700m. She also closed the recently awarded LEPCC project to Technip India and Technip Italy, the largest grass root Hydrogen Generation Unit of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation in Visakhapatnam valued at US$300m. Prior to these two colossal projects she worked on another large project for Technip France and Technip India, for ENI Ghana, now under execution in the western coast of Ghana for US$210m. Kathpalia runs her department with the philosophy of ‘instilling in them the value of knowing the company’s business inside and out, so as to astutely apply relevant law, of which they already have expertise. The more a lawyer knows about the business/project, the easier it is to unravel the legal issues, [then] draft, review and negotiate related contracts’.