Team size: 10

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Mos recently. we have supported the set-up of a new concentrate plant in Singapore, in record time. This is the foundation of our company’s expansion plan and strategy to be more agile and asset light. As part of the new direction, we have successfully completed the divestment of our Nigerian operations this year and appointed the buyer as our local bottling partner. In line with our expansion strategy, we have also worked on the launch of new brands and product innovation in our beverage and health enrichment, as well as potential M&A projects.

This is also a year of harmonising the ways of working for legal and compliance as part of the larger Suntory group of companies. We launched our Legal Competencies for our APAC legal community. This is to drive performance, and more importantly, the development of our counsels with a common platform and understanding.

At Suntory, growing well and sustainably is a business imperative. We held the first legal sustainability conference, together with our global and regional sustainability colleagues, to share best practices and discuss common legal issues in our journey to achieve our sustainability targets. We have also been busy supporting various contentious and regulatory matters in the region including for the Brand’s trademark globally with some successes to celebrate.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

Every in-house legal department is facing the same challenges on resources and spend. The quest to move up the value chain in terms of the work we do is also universal. Think about how much easier it is now to do a lot of the time-consuming tasks, such as key word searches. For Suntory, we are still in the process of convergence because our various businesses and teams are at different legs of the digital journey. Truth be told, after the pandemic, going almost all paperless despite some formalities has been the basic yet most liberating start.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

With the development of legal technology and artificial intelligence, the sense is that anything non artificial will be the key to success. This means strategic networking, communicating, influencing and business acumen. In-house counsel must learn to look up and explore. The difference with externals and machines is the human ability to understand not just the business and the egos but how everything connects. As in-house counsel, we are part of the business, and as such, we still have a role to play as the preservers of the corporate conscience.