About

Thavakumar Kandiahpillai is general counsel at SapuraKencana, one of Southeast Asia’s largest oilfield services companies and a top 20 company in Malaysia. Having been in charge of the legal department at the group since 2012, Thavakumar Kandiahpillai has led a group wide compliance initiative with special emphasis on behavioural patterns and heuristics that piloted at SapuraKencana’s Singapore drilling subsidiaries. Previously, Kandiahpillai spent six years working as the general counsel of Shell Malaysia, where he led a team of over 20 lawyers providing full legal support to a company that is Malaysia’s largest payer of foreign tax. Over his tenure at Shell his team became a global hub for mergers and acquisitions, technology projects, compliance and dispute resolution in the Asia Pacific region. Prior to becoming general counsel at Shell, Kandiahpillai spent some time in legal managerial positions at the company and before that worked for nine years in private practice at the law firms Mohamed Ismail & Co, and Zain & Co.