Key team members: Maree Myerscough, Snigdha Nahar, Aileen Fu, Adam Blythe, Zheng Hao Chan, Anita Goh

Major legal advisers: Ashurst, DLA Piper New Zealand, Nishimura & Asahi, Baker & McKenzie, LCS & Partners, Kim & Chang, Yoon & Yang, Latham & Watkins

Can you please provide an insight into the legal team, outlining its responsibilities?

Collaborative, cohesive and aligned. Those three words best describe our Legal team at Aquila Clean Energy APAC. Each team member is an excellent individual contributor with stellar, diverse experience gained at top international law firms and companies – and together, we form a fantastic team.

Our Legal team is a true business partner and trusted adviser for Aquila’s business and corporate functions. Under the leadership of general counsel Maree Myerscough, we are structured into two sub-teams: (i) transactional and (ii) corporate.

Our transactional team is led by associate general counsel Snigdha Nahar and supported by Adam Blythe and Zheng Hao Chan. It is an integral part of the investment team across the life cycle of each clean energy project we undertake, from initial engagement and progressing through due diligence, acquisition, project development, project financing and construction phases to achieve commercial operation.

Our corporate team is led by Aileen Fu and supported by Anita Goh. It represents the backbone of our APAC comprehensive organisation by ensuring that the legal needs of our crucial support functions are being fulfilled. This includes everything from advising concerning office leases, data protection compliance, and fulfilling corporate governance requirements to proactive support of day-to-day needs – whether negotiations with service providers or incorporating a new entity – there certainly is never a dull day as in-house corporate counsel!

We constantly dialogue between our teams, with various matters jointly handled (e.g., structuring, training, corporate governance and secretarial issues). Such collaboration is crucial for Aquila Clean Energy (part of Aquila Group), a clean energy platform that funds develops, builds and operates solar PV, wind power and battery storage assets across the Asia Pacific region.

Compliance, consistency and ESG concerns lie at the heart of our Legal team’s focus on supporting the growth of our clean energy business. Our commitment towards sustainability goes beyond supporting the energy transition and decarbonisation of the world´s economy – we believe that it is essential that we manage ESG factors within our investment strategies and processes, acknowledging that this is always a process of continuous improvement.

Our legal team proactively arranges training for the business and is consistently working on our templates and process to optimise our responsiveness to the company. We manage our legal spending by recording and tracking our legal spending and external legal engagements in a tracker (proving that lawyers can (and do) Excel). We are focused on maintaining excellent, collaborative relationships with external counsel in all our markets.

We also know how to have fun! The legal team is usually at the forefront of all office events, including CSR activities like transport challenges and beach clean-ups.

Serving as in-house counsel in an evolving industry is challenging and demanding. Still, we go home satisfied that we are contributing to something so integral for our planet (green, clean energy) while having a great time doing it together.