Frederic Brion – GC Powerlist
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Southeast Asia 2017

Frederic Brion

General counsel | PT Hutchison 3 Indonesia

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Southeast Asia 2017

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Frederic Brion

General counsel | PT Hutchison 3 Indonesia

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Frederic Brion has worked on many pioneering projects in Southeast Asia throughout his career in the telecommunications sector. During his decade-long tenure as general counsel at his current employer, Hutchison 3 Indonesia, one of Indonesia’s fastest growing telecommunications services providers, Brion has participated in the first sale and lease back of telecom assets (worth $1.2bn) in Southeast Asia and has worked on the world’s two largest telecoms contracts. Brion shares that the key to his success has been his willingness to work in new locations and his openness to other cultures, ‘What moulded me as the legal professional I am today, is the combination of a vast knowledge of developing countries at a time where most lawyers wanted to work in Washington, D.C., Paris or London, and a deep interest in interacting with people from very varied backgrounds’. Upon joining Hutchinson in Indonesia in March 2007, Brion discovered a nearly non-existent legal department that the entire company tried to avoid interacting with as much as possible. Thus, at the early stages of his career at the company, Brion spent a considerable amount of time hiring, mentoring and training new employees for his team and instigating positive attitudes from members of his team. He fostered a culture of deep sense of practicality, an interest in matters other than traditional legal matters, an understanding of commercial aspects and impacts. ‘10 years later, my team has grown tremendously in terms of knowledge, interests and way of work’, Brion says, ‘The legal department is very much involved in all aspects of the business, and often leads when it comes to commercial negotiations’. During Brion’s time at Hutchinson his team has remained mostly unchanged over the years in a market where employees tend to change job every 18 months or so. ‘A lot of my staff are being approached by bigger companies with higher salaries (up to two or three times their current salary sometimes) and yet, they decide to stay for the reason that in other companies they would not have the possibilities to learn and they would not get the exposure they get in our legal department’, Brion says. Prior to joining Hutchinson, Brion worked briefly at the international telecommunications business Millicom (owner of the Tigo brand).

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