About

Gerald Chew has been a major component of Delfi Limited’s success since being installed as its first general counsel, law and corporate affairs all the way back in 2005. While here, Chew was one of a few executives who oversaw the sale of the company’s Cocoa Ingredients division to Barry Callebaut for US$860m in 2013. ‘More recently’, he explains, ‘in April 2018 I assisted and advised management on Delfi’s acquisition of the branded consumer rights for the “Van Houten” range of trademarks from Hershey covering 42 countries, which includes China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and ASEAN amongst other countries in Asia’. Chew has been operating in an in-house capacity for far longer than many of his contemporaries (‘you could say that I was a pioneer in-house counsel’, he says), having originally become an internal lawyer in 1990. ‘There were much fewer counsel in-house, when I started work in 1990’, he explains. ‘The world has become much more complex and interconnected now, and while laws are also more sophisticated and complex, not everyone may respect the law. As counsel (and leaders), I feel that we should bear in mind that we manage others as we manage ourselves by the thoughts we hold in our minds. If we nurture thoughts and ideas of integrity, strategy and fair-play, these are things that are likely to “rub off” on others as well’. He concludes, ‘my feeling is that every counsel, no matter what the scope or extent of his or her role, can effectively contribute to their organisation by contributing to its culture’.