About

Initially joining Marina Bay Sands in 2010, Faris Alsagoff is an integral part of the company’s senior management. He recalls the revolutionary atmosphere around the company when he first joined, with Marina Bay Sands marking the onset of the casino and integrated resort industry in Singapore, and the challenges that entailed. ‘Assuming the general counsel position of Marina Bay Sands at that time meant having to grapple with a steep learning curve on the fly in order to steer the company and navigate a complex, newly developed and untested body of law, with no expert specialist resources in the legal industry to tap into. Operating outside one’s comfort zone on a daily basis required constant out-of-the-box thinking’. His career, which included multi-national leadership roles in the past, has furnished him with ‘an international perspective and a sensitivity to the practical and cultural differences in approach to legal issues in different countries’, which he believes has shaped his leadership style. He considers his construction of a top-quality legal function at Marina Bay Sands as among his greatest career achievements. ‘The opportunity to plan for and create a legal department (which today is over 20-strong) from scratch when the company began operations gave me a greater appreciation of the different skill sets required to form an effective legal team’, he says.