About

Canan Arslan currently stands as the head of the legal department in Turkey for US multinational biopharmaceutical company Amgen and its subsidiary Mustafa Nevzat İlaç, a leading local pharmaceutical company with approximately 1,000 employees. Arslan is also responsible for the export business of Mustafa Nevzat İlaç, which extends to five regions covering 70% of the world’s pharmaceutical market. Arslan explains that accomplishing business goals in such a highly regulated industry requires practical, integrated legal analysis and advice which has contributed significantly to her growth and success as a pharmaceutical in-house counsel: ‘I feel lucky to have started my in-house career in the pharmaceutical sector, which is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing industries in Turkey. It also remains one of the most challenging, mainly due to pressures faced by pharmaceutical companies from many directions’. In addition to her in-house daily role she is also a board member in the two companies: ‘My role as a board member has helped me gain a completely different perspective and allows for a 360-degree view of things’, she says. This role has helped Arslan to position herself as a proactive legal and business risk manager, anticipating actions and key contributions long before an issue arises, as opposed to playing a reactive advisory role. Establishing the legal department for both entities under her responsibility, which ‘has never had a culture of working with in-house counsel until then’ has been a challenging task in terms of creating awareness about issues that may potentially require legal advice and demonstrating the contribution and value added by the legal department to the business. It is here where Arslan takes pride in changing the attitude towards the legal department and shedding the ‘business-blocker’ perception, something which necessitated an intellectual and cultural change and the development of trust on the side of both parties. ‘I have gone a long way towards [achieving] this goal, yet this is an ongoing process which requires continuous improvement on the side of the business and the in-house counsel’, explains Arslan. Before Amgen and Mustafa Nevzat İlaç, Arslan spent two years in the Turkish legal department of German conglomerate Bayer – her first in-house legal role in the healthcare sector. She also enjoyed a successful eight year private practice career between 2003 and 2011 working at reputable law firms such as ELIG Attorneys at Law and White & Case.