Event Report

At The Legal 500 we strive to produce the best, most informative events for in-house counsel and private practice lawyers alike, with the main objective being to bring the best people in the industry together to share best practice and learn from each other. 

Singapore is a place where, over the course of a wide range of events prior to and after the pandemic, we have been able to do this extremely effectively, and our events have been going from strength to strength. The GC Summit Singapore, at the Pan Pacific, continued the excellent standard we have set ourselves and provided a schedule that was truly hard to beat for the strength of its speakers and the in-depth discussions they prompted.  

Our opening speaker, the hugely charismatic Lily Tsen of Amcor Flexibles, opened proceedings with a wide-ranging talk which urged the in-house lawyers in the audience to find their voice and assert themselves in their organisations to make positive change in the wider world at large.  

This dovetailed nicely into our first panel discussion, alongside Shook, Lin & Bok which looked at ESG roadmapping through the lens of reporting and disclosure obligations. The expert panel was well-placed to tackle this topic, featuring a wide range of perspectives: Dr Joseph Chun of Shook, Lin & Bok, Dalvin Kaur of Maybank Investment Banking Group, Marika Stocker of Sustainalytics, Wan Kwong Weng of Mapletree and Jaclyn Yeo of DBS Bank. 

Our next panel alongside Helmsman – on stage were Una Khng of Helmsman, Natasha Sulaiman of Singapore Airlines, Professor Yip Man of the Yong Pung How School of Law at SMU Shawn Chen of Deloitte and Delphine Ho of The Arbitration Chambers – provided valuable insights to those in attendance on how companies can prepare to face and mitigate the risks in potential cross-border disputes.  

After the coffee break, The Legal 500 and Baker McKenzie had assembled a top-notch panel from a wide variety of geographical regions and legal backgrounds: Nandakumar (Kumar) Ponniya and Yoshiaki Muto, both partners at Baker McKenzie; Piyush Gupta of Singapore Airlines; Jasreen Singh of dwp; Eileen Wong of Crédit Agricole CIB; and Jacelyn Chan of foodpanda. This session, which included a vigorous Q&A session at the close, utilized the wide range of experiences on stage to look at corporate governance concerns from a fresh perspective.  

The final session was a unique one, and is testament to the wide international reach that we have in bringing top people together. A selection of the leading regional managing partners in Southeast Asia were brought together to compare and contrast experiences, and give the benefit of their wisdom to the lucky audience.  

Moderated by Legal 500 Powerlists global editor Joe Boswell, Audray Souche of DFDL, Mark Fraser of Frasers Law Company, Kudun Sukhumananda of Kudun and Partners and Shirin Tang of Morrison Foerster talked about a huge range of topics including managing their extensive legal teams, the relative strengths of their firms, and predictions and prognoses for the future of the legal world.  

The audience, which was over 160-strong over the course of the day, provided excellent feedback on the quality of the discussions and the interactivity of the sessions. 

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