About

Krungsri is the fifth largest bank in Thailand in terms of assets, loans and deposits and provides numerous financial products and services to small and medium enterprises, corporations and customers. Supporting its services is a legal division of 18 lawyers and four non-lawyers to support administrative tasks, as well as a contract and registration department comprising of 175 lawyers and eight non-lawyers. Since Krungsri acquired Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi’s Bangkok (BTMU) branch in 2014, the legal division has adjusted its internal structure to have clearer roles and responsibilities to support each category of the business. It is to this end that the legal division has executed an exchange program between Krungsri’s lawyer and BTMU’s legal staff, a task which has taken three months in Tokyo and Bangkok, recruiting experienced lawyers to the legal team to support and strengthen the bank and its group of companies as well as close coordination with the Japanese legal division. The team is led by general counsel, Phawana Niemloy who leads corporate strategic and tactical legal initiatives for the business operations. Speaking on the departments’ contribution to the bank, Niemloy concedes, ‘the legal department supports the business by becoming a business partner as opposed to an end-process consultation unit. By being involved with the product development from the start and being part of the team through the whole process enables the legal team to provide more added value legal advice and shorten development processes. This has also helped the team in its quest to obtain approval from regulators as they are able to consequently fully understand the details and accurately address concerns of the regulators’. Amongst one of its largest transactions, the legal team have helped the bank to conduct due diligence and provide legal and compliance advice on its purchase of the Thai auto leasing business of GE Capital Auto Lease with a value of approximately US$1.4 bn.