About

Buchan Love was appointed vice president and associate general counsel at Mead Johnson Nutrition in 2013. He manages a team of six lawyers and oversees all legal matters for the Asia Pacific region, covering diverse markets throughout Southeast Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia) along with India and the distributor markets of Sri Lanka and Pakistan. New Zealand-qualified Love worked at Hesketh Henry in New Zealand and Peachey & Co and Rowe & Maw (now Mayer Brown) in the UK before moving to Dej-Udom & Associates in Thailand in 1999. Love says the eight years he spent with the firm were an invaluable learning experience. ‘The majority of our clientele were multinationals and for much of the time I spent with the firm I was the only non-Thai practitioner. That gave me a wide exposure to a range of corporate clients and many different industries and business models. It really helped me to become a broad generalist, which is very useful training for working in-house’. In 2006, Love decided he wanted to get closer to business and made the move to the Bangkok office of Mead Johnson Nutrition, at that time part of Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), covering both pharmaceuticals and nutrition businesses, where his appreciation of the cultural dynamics of the region were put to good effect. ‘There is no such place as “Asia”’, says Love. ‘The cultural and legal diversity between jurisdictions is so great that you really have to treat each country in its own terms. Going in-house can be a challenge as a result, and as a New Zealander I was aware that I would have to work hard to build relationships and gain the respect of business people in a variety of locations. To become a respected advisor requires a lot of work, but it is worth it in the long-run because so many legal issues are of fundamental importance to doing business in this region. My point of pride is the transition from being technical advisor to trusted counsellor. It was a fascinating experience for me and I firmly believe that an in-house lawyer will only succeed in this region if they are always prepared to learn’. A further point of pride for Love was his close involvement in the separation of BMS and Mead Johnson Nutrition in preparation for the listing of Mead Johnson Nutrition on the New York Stock Exchange, a process which completed in 2010 after just 18 months of work (similarly complex separations typically take many years to complete). Love received recognition from the company’s president for his work on the separation and considers it one of the most intense and professionally rewarding chapters of his career. He has since played key roles in several foundations of Mead Johnson’s business structure. For instance Love transitioned Mead Johnson’s approach to compliance from an approvals-based approach to a risk-assessment approach, and was the legal lead for the implementation of the company’s Asia operating business model and regional headquarters in Singapore. For a businesses operating in the highly-regulated infant formula market, getting these processes right was an important matter, and as counsel, Buchan had a big role to play. ‘Our consumers are babies and the leadership of this business demands that we are operating to the highest standards. As a lawyer it is my job to give all stakeholders comfort that we are operating to the best possible standards, and to do that I need to get right down into the weeds so I can understand the commercial drivers of the company’.