About

The French multinational supplier of industrial gases, Air Liquide, has had operations in Singapore since 1911 and in Malaysia since 1927. Today, its robust production and distribution networks in Southeast Asia that are engineered to serve the needs of its diverse customer base, is monitored by a team of four lawyers – three in Singapore and one in Indonesia – with regional legal director Venkatesh Prabhu, holding overall responsibility for Southeast Asia supported by Jonathan Yuen heading the legal function of Singapore, Malaysia and Riau Islands. ‘We are flexible in our work-scope and share the work of the Southeast Asia region, comprising of seven countries that we operate in, depending upon the type of assignment to be handled and also rely on external counsel for specific assignments and issues’, says Prabhu. With the rapidly developing economic and political landscape of the region, the legal department makes it a point to keep themselves, senior management and the rest of the businesses abreast of new developments and changes in the legal and regulatory domain – particularly corporate governance, developments in competition law and data protection regimes in the countries they operate in. The purpose of this is ‘to create a sound awareness in our people so as to constantly tune our businesses for compliance with the regulations’, explains Prabhu. Describing how they implement this initiative, Prabhu goes on to say that, ‘we have stringent Group policies on anti-corruption, competition law compliance and local law compliance and have deployed programmes for periodic classroom trainings, online tools for refresher courses, which employees have to undertake periodically. We closely monitor contract reviews and contract compliances and have deployed online tools and also regularly train our businesses on contracts management. These are in addition to our regular work-scope of advising businesses on contract negotiations, regulatory compliance, M&A and restructuring, labour and employment laws and corporate governance’. Highlighted as true partners to their businesses, the regional Air Liquide legal team are recognised for achieving their company’s objectives, while simultaneously enabling them to identify red flags to reduce the level risk the organisation is exposed to.