About

Su Puay Leng was promoted in 2015 to the role of head of legal of Maxis, Malaysia’s leading telecommunications service provider. Prior to her promotion she led major transactions for the Group, handling corporate and operational matters including leading the Maxis Berhad pre-IPO Group corporate restructuring exercise in 2009, negotiating the first ever sharing of active telecommunications infrastructure with other service providers in South East Asia in 2011 and co-authoring the General Consumer Code of Practice for the Malaysian communications and multimedia industry. She currently heads the Group’s legal operations including structuring and executing corporate and funding exercises as well as complex commercial deals ensuring legal risks are balanced with commercial viability. 2015 and 2016 were busy years for Puay Leng as Maxis launched two unrated Sukuk Murabahah programmes for RM5bn and RM10bn, respectively and completing an internal reorganisation to consolidate and integrate the businesses and undertakings of Maxis’ wholly owned operating subsidiaries under Maxis Broadband Sdn Bhd. Puay Leng also played a key role in the management team responsible for the business IT transformation programme during this period. Her activities within the legal department have also focused on facilitating the company’s “Always On” marketing campaign, as they increasingly immerse themselves in an ever expanding universe of connected applications. This has been achieved thanks to her efforts in supporting new projects aimed at bringing better internet experience to millions. For example, Maxis recently signed a partnership with Vodafone to bring “internet of things” technologies to businesses operating in Malaysia. This partnership will enable Vodafone to introduce its advanced data network to the country and to digitalise and transform the operations of thousands of enterprises. A proponent that lawyers should evolve into business enablers and partners, Puay Leng started the “Legal as a Business Partner” campaign in 2016 where lawyers are encouraged and expected to understand the commercial and technical interplay to better provide legal solutions for business efficacy without compromise to the Group’s interest instead of a pure compliance approach of highlighting statutory and legal requirements. As part of the campaign, the traditional approach of lawyers handling specific portfolios was replaced with a convergence regime where lawyers are up-skilled to be ‘technology neutral’ and ‘full value chain conversant’ enabling them to handle procurement contracts across technology domains for both radio access networks and IT; they are trained to undertake customer and partner facing contracts alongside vendor contracts to facilitate seamless confident service levels to customers while incentivising business partners to deliver their best innovations for Maxis’ customers. Puay Leng continues to lead her team towards achieving Maxis’ ambitions of being a fully digital company by 2018. Her immediate dream is developing a tool for the Maxis Malaysian sales force to sign contracts digitally and remotely followed by seamless importation into a contracts repository maintained at headquarters. Puay Leng, who holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Cambridge courtesy of a fully funded Maxis scholarship, also sits on the Maxis defalcation and tender committees.