About

Formerly an in-house counsel for Kellogg and Nestlé Australia, Christopher Lee first joined Schneider Electric in 2006 as general counsel and company secretary for Schneider Electric Australia. Now deputy general counsel of the Schneider Electric Group and regional general counsel and compliance officer for Asia-Pacific, he takes on an extremely high level of responsibility and a correspondingly complex workload that puts him among the elite of the Southeast Asian in-house legal community. His creation and expansion of his team of lawyers has had a major positive impact on his own professional growth, and ranks as a major success for him: ‘Creating the Asia Pacific legal team for Schneider from a disparate group of five lawyers prior to 2009 to a fully integrated legal department of 26 lawyers and company secretary specialists based in eight locations which today support operations in approximately 26 countries as trusted business partners is a particular highlight of my career’. When discussing specific project work, Lee mentions ‘successfully negotiating a significant global outsourcing contract of significant value and duration’ for Schneider as another highlight. ‘The negotiations themselves required numerous rounds of negotiations in Brussels and Paris over a period of over nine months while activating projects team located in Europe and Asia across our various organisations. The approach from our Schneider team highlights the power of strong collaboration within our organisation despite geographical and time zone challenges’, Lee says. He also provides further examples of high-value deals that he and his team have been responsible for in the company’s recent history: ‘Over the last three years, I and my team have managed the integration of Schneider’s numerous global acquisitions including Invensys (US$5.2bn), ASCO (US$1.25bn), and we are currently working on the acquisition in India of the EAC assets of Larson & Toubro. In addition, we have had numerous other smaller M&A transactions within the Asia Pacific region to support from time to time, including the buy-out of the minority promoter in the Indian business of Luminous’. Lee’s combination of senior experience, his excellent work on the construction of his legal team and the long list of successful projects supported mark him out as one of the leading lights of the Southeast Asian in-house legal community.