Overview: Panama

This chapter will cover a general description of Panama, taking into consideration several positive and strategic complements that influence the services that may be promoted in different areas such as business, logistics, financial and maritime matters that are seen from a global perspective. In this sense, Panama, as a country with a privileged geographic position that allows it to take advantage of economic competition and worldwide opportunities, is one of the countries with the highest growth and enrichment potential, while offering important benefits for foreign investments.

Panama allows us to provide all the necessary legal services to provide security and tranquillity to a multinational company that decides to establish in our country. For this, aside from our geographical position that allows greater logistic opportunities, we must consider the laws and regulations that make Panama one of the best countries for investment and competitiveness, achieving better profits compared to other countries in the region.   

Panama has special tax regimes with the objective of promoting productive activities in different areas of the country that help generate new jobs and economic growth by giving opportunities for the companies to start operations.

The Panama Pacific Special Economic Area, created by Law 41 of 20 July 2004, establishes a special legal, fiscal, customs, labor, immigration and business regime for the establishment and operation in the Area. This special Area aims to encourage and ensure the free flow and movement of goods, services, and capital, to attract and promote investment and jobs generation.

The companies located in the Panama Pacific Area have several tax benefits such as exemption from income tax on activities encouraged by law, exemption from remittances, interest, and business privilege for services abroad and capital gains, among many other benefits.

We also have Law 57 of 2018 of the Multinational Companies Headquarters (SEM for its acronym in Spanish) that allows a company to maintain its business offices in Panama to provide services to the headquarters and having benefits for both the companies and their executives who come to work in Panama:

  • Tax benefits for companies: reduced rate of income tax, exemption from payment of dividend tax on operation notices and; exemption from the payment of the dividend tax, the complementary tax and the branch tax, without distinction that they are from local, foreign or exempt sources, among other benefits.
  • Tax benefits for executives: by opting for the SEM (Migration) visa, they may obtain exemption from income tax, exemption from import tax for household goods and exemption from import tax on motor vehicles.

Taking into account the Panamanian migratory system, it is also relevant to point out that the SEM visa allows the headquarters to hire as many expats as necessary for the operation without limitation.  Additionally, it allows the expat to obtain a residence permit for his or her dependents with unlimited renewals and eventually grants the principal a permanent permission to remain that leads to a Panamanian identification document.

As part of the situation that arises from the COVID-19 pandemic, the labor environment has been transformed with various regulations issued under the State of National Emergency decreed by the Executive Branch, covering working hours reduction, labor contract suspensions, among other measures that benefits the employee and helps the employer to reduce the economic impact of the pandemic.

Regarding home office working, Panama has a recently enacted Law No. 126 of February 18, 2020 that regulates the offsite working option, which includes provisions related to the responsibility of the employer for the health and safety of the employees working from home.  The law establishes that teleworkers must be informed of the company’s policies regarding this matter and that a program to supervise and train personnel on health and safety matters must be adopted, as well as a manual of good environmental practices and general socialization.

In addition to the fiscal / tax measures that we have contemplated in previous paragraphs, other measures have also been issued to help alleviate the strong impact on the global economy due to of COVID-19, such as the following measures:

  • Decree that grants a term of 120 days, effective once the decree was published, for the payment of any tax to be paid to the General Directorate of Income, without causing interest, surcharges, or fines for late payments.
  • Deadlines are extended for the payment of taxes that are caused or must be paid during a period declared as a State of National Emergency, until 31 July 2020. Likewise, the payment of the Property Tax corresponding to the first four-month period of 2020. This, without entailing fines, interest, surcharges for late payment as well.
  • Deadlines are extended to file the Tax Returns for fiscal year 2019 until 31 July 2020.
  • Deadlines to submit the Transfer Price Report regarding the operations carried out with related parties during the 2019 fiscal period were extended until 30 September 2020.
  • Extension of one year of exemption for companies registered with the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Authority (AMPYME).
  • Extend the deadlines to present the Report of the special payroll 03 corresponding to the fiscal period 2019 until 31 July 2020.

Another important aspect of the Panamanian legal framework is Law 81 from 26 March 2019 regarding the protection of personal data. This law, to be implemented from March 2021, establishes principles, rights, obligations, and procedures that regulate the protection of personal data. Responsibilities for the infractions or faults and sanctions that may take place, among other provisions, are also included. It is very important for all companies established in Panama to make sure that their internal policy regarding this matter complies with the local law and in any case should adjust accordingly before the law comes into effect.

As to money laundering and terrorist financing, in the last 12 months Panama has adopted a series of laws, executive decrees, and other regulations that contribute to compliance with international standards, so it has strengthened it’s position as a safe and collaborative jurisdiction. In addition, it has improved its governmental administrative structure of both financial and non-financial obligated subjects to ensure full compliance of the money laundering and terrorist financing measures, including a legal mechanism to process tax evasion.

At EY Law Panama we can provide detailed legal guidance to help meet the needs that are required in general or more specific aspects of companies established or to be established in Panama, including those related to the consequences of COVID-19. Panama is a country full of opportunities where all the advantages and benefits given should be taken knowing that it provides for entrepreneurship and face the new global economy that we see every day with new challenges and complexities to achieve.


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Latin America’s New Investment Landscape

Introduction

As the COVID-19 pandemic creates significant uncertainty and unique challenges in the global investment environment, its impact on Latin America presents several opportunities for private equity funds. In navigating the new investment landscape with respect to their Latin American investment programs, there are number of corporate, finance and tax issues PE funds should consider before proceeding with Latin American acquisitions or increasing investment in existing portfolio assets. This article discusses certain tax structuring, transfer pricing, and tax compliance considerations relevant for PE funds holding Latin American portfolio assets or expanding their investment in Latin America.

Tax Structuring Considerations

Acquisition of Distressed Latin American Companies

PE funds are seeking acquisitions of distressed Latin American companies or those requiring capital infusions to survive the economic downturn. For example, targets include, among others, family-held companies with shareholders seeking liquidity or diversification, companies unable to restructure their debt or continue with an existing IPO plan, and real estate holding companies with immediate cash needs but steady revenue flows.

In structuring acquisitions of Latin American targets, PE funds must identify the appropriate vehicles through which to invest. For example, a PE fund might analyze whether it should establish a tax treaty structure to effect an acquisition. In a private equity context, the primary tax consideration for most fund managers is taxation on exit (ie capital gains tax). For example, among others, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico generally impose, with some exceptions, tax upon the sale of shares by nonresident investors. Accordingly, funds might establish a Spanish or Dutch investment structure because of Spain and the Netherlands’ significant tax treaty network in Latin America, or structures with transparent investment vehicles such as Canadian limited partnerships (eg Alberta or Ontario) and certain Luxembourg entities. Funds might also consider establishing local investment vehicles to mitigate taxation on exit, such as Brazilian Fundos de Investimento em Participações (FIPs), which can eliminate Brazilian capital gains tax on exit (although such structure has been scrutinized by the Brazilian tax authorities in recent years). Fund sponsors are rightly concerned that exit taxes in Latin America can reduce a fund’s IRR, especially if some taxes are not creditable against taxes of fund investors.

Tax due diligence is as important as ever. Among other things, deal teams should carefully examine items such as operating loss carryovers, permanent establishment risk for multinational targets, tax compliance, accrued and outstanding income, payroll, and VAT tax liabilities etc. Also, a target’s receipt of government subsidies, credits, or other assistance in response to the global pandemic could restrict its ability to pay dividends or even alter the timing of a future exit. If indeed a target has received such assistance, funds must consider whether the proposed acquisition will jeopardize continued assistance or if a sale or change of control will require immediate repayment of such assistance.

Debt Restructuring and Acquisition of Portfolio Company Debt

Dealing with portfolio company debt is another area that has recently received significant attention. In order to preserve cash to meet operational needs, leveraged portfolio companies have developed strategies for managing their debt service, including working with lenders to obtain a combination of additional borrowings, forbearance and standstill agreements, and debt covenant waivers.

In order to ease the process with lenders, some PE funds have chosen to request capital calls to fund their struggling portfolio companies, while others have lent to their Latin American portfolio companies. Other PE fund groups have instead opted to acquire their portfolio companies’ third party debt. In certain cases, funds seek to acquire the debt at a discounted price and sell it at a premium when market conditions improve, while in other cases, the motivation is simply to maintain some modicum of control over a portfolio company’s debt service. Some funds have considered raising credit funds and/or establishing a special structure for that purpose, such as an Irish intermediation structure.

PE funds must address the Latin American tax consequences arising from each alternative for both the fund and the portfolio company. Some key considerations include:

  • Cancellation of debt considerations. As part of a debt restructuring, portfolio companies must consider whether income or other taxes are imposed on any amount of cancelled debt.
  • Deductibility of interest payments. To the extent a PE fund lends to a portfolio company or acquires its third party debt, the fund should consider whether the interest paid by the portfolio company is a tax deductible expense, particularly if the fund and the portfolio company are considered to be related or if the fund is organized in a low-tax jurisdiction as determined by local law.
  • Withholding taxes. Withholding taxes imposed on interest payments must also be analyzed. Most Latin American jurisdictions, including Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, impose withholding tax on interest paid to nonresident lenders. An income tax treaty may reduce the withholding tax rate for PE funds using a treaty platform for their Latin American investments. Spain and the Netherlands, for example, are jurisdictions commonly used by PE funds (and other investors) for investing in Latin America.

In addition to the considerations listed above, PE funds must also address transfer pricing concerns, particularly as it relates to whether the terms and conditions of related party debt is arm’s-length and otherwise compliant with local transfer pricing rules.

Transfer Pricing

Reviewing, updating and, if needed, revising transfer pricing arrangements is a method by which portfolio companies may preserve cash and otherwise manage tax positions. For instance, adherence to the arm’s-length principal, in conjunction with contractual provisions in intercompany agreements (e.g., force majeure), permits related parties to adjust their intercompany arrangements to reflect economic reality. For example, in the absence of an advantageous income tax treaty, many Latin American jurisdictions impose significant withholding taxes on service payments, royalties, and management/monitoring fees paid abroad. Analyzing existing arrangements may yield opportunities to mitigate or otherwise restructure the payments, resulting in potential tax savings.

In any case, as Latin American governments seek to raise revenue through taxes and increased tax audits, portfolio companies should ensure their transfer pricing documentation and cost-sharing policies are compliant with local country transfer pricing requirements and of course, reality. They should examine whether their transfer pricing has reacted to supply chain and operational changes brought on by the pandemic, and whether such changes require remedial changes to internal pricing of goods and services. While Chile, Colombia, and Mexico are the only Latin American members of the OECD, the domestic legislation of a number of Latin American jurisdictions contain many of the same or similar principles set forth in OECD transfer pricing guidance. For those Latin American jurisdictions that do not explicitly adopt OECD transfer pricing principles, such principles may serve as secondary or supplemental guidance in interpreting domestic transfer pricing legislation (eg Brazil).

In assessing transfer pricing risk, portfolio companies should examine their current intercompany transaction flow and supply chain and corresponding intercompany agreements. Mature portfolio companies with older transfer pricing policies may discover their intercompany transaction flow and supply chain has evolved over time, such that their intercompany agreements do not accurately reflect current reality. For example, the method of compensation (eg profit split, cost-plus etc) originally provided for in an agreement may no longer be appropriate. Similarly, an intercompany agreement may not describe services actually provided between related parties. Because it is common for government auditors to request intercompany agreements in connection with a transfer pricing audit, such auditors can seize on the fact that intercompany agreements are not being followed, are otherwise inconsistent with reality, or do not even exist.

Tax Compliance

As Latin American governments continue developing strategies for battling the pandemic, they are also developing strategies for an economic recovery. While the pandemic’s true cumulative economic impact is still very much unknown, past economic downturns show us that PE funds can expect to see increased audit activity within their portfolio of Latin American companies.

Accordingly, PE funds should work closely with the management of their Latin American portfolio companies to ensure they have a robust tax compliance program in place such that they are well positioned to defend against potential tax audits or avoid potential penalties of lax internal pricing and arm’s-length documentation. They should consider and reassess material uncertain tax positions that, if successfully challenged, could result in significant tax liability and substantial penalties.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic will continue to generate significant challenges for many Latin American businesses, some of which sought additional funding and credit facilities from their shareholders and lenders, while others concluded filing for reorganization or bankruptcy is their only viable alternative. PE sponsors with Latin American investment programs face substantial challenges, but many others find investment opportunities notwithstanding the current economic environment. Addressing tax structuring, transfer pricing, and tax compliance considerations in Latin America is an important part of overcoming inevitable obstacles and seizing on new investment opportunities.

Interview with: Kresna Panggabean and Benny Bernarto, TNB & Partners

Kresna Panggabean
Benny Bernarto

GC: What do you see as the main points that differentiate TNB & Partners from your competitors?

Kresna Panggabean (KP): We are one of the few international firms operating a disputes practice in Indonesia. Most international businesses know that Indonesian courts can be notoriously challenging to navigate and that the legal market for dispute resolution is dominated by local players. While we are happy to provide clients with a full service offering, we do not focus on matters in the local courts. Instead, we focus on cross-border corporate disputes where we can plug into the strength of the Norton Rose Fulbright network to add value.

Benny Bernarto (BB): Norton Rose Fulbright has been an established presence in Indonesia for nearly 30 years from its Australian connection and has, through various forms of associations and incorporations, acquired longstanding expertise in the Indonesian market. While the core strength of our practice in Indonesia has been handling corporate and banking and finance transactions, over the last three years we have been putting a lot of effort into building our dispute resolutions offering, working hard to increase the capacity of the firm to serve clients on a broader range of matters.

We (Kresna and I) are corporate lawyers by background, which helps a lot in understanding the nature of corporate disputes. In my experience, there are not many disputes lawyers in the Indonesian market who have a strong corporate background or understand complex, cross-border corporate transactions. We have knowledge of how international companies operate and can follow what our partners across Norton Rose Fulbright have seen in other jurisdictions and bring that expertise to bear on matters in Indonesia.

As a rule, clients want to work with the same firm or lawyers. If a dispute arises in connection with an M&A they want to stay with the same firm. Likewise, clients who deal with Norton Rose Fulbright offices outside Indonesia want to keep the same firm if they end up facing a dispute elsewhere. Because these clients are based outside Indonesia they are often unfamiliar with the very unique market dynamics

GC: What are some of the trends facing the dispute resolution landscape in Indonesia?

BB: Business is becoming more disputatious and client demand for dispute resolution services is increasing. This will certainly continue. As the global market becomes more sophisticated we will naturally see more disputes. Market sophistication leads to disagreement and dispute, new regulations lead to disputes, and cross-border trade is almost inevitably going to be followed by cross-border disputes.

KP: Indonesia is an incredibly disputatious market. In the last couple of years, we have received an increasing number of enquiries from clients facing disputes, so it is important for us to have a strong disputes offering. There are really two main sources of these disputes. We are seeing more disputes related to M&A or joint ventures, but we are also seeing an increase in things like anti-bribery and corruption investigations. That means disputes are evolving and a disputes lawyer can no longer focus only on the sorts of matters which end up in court. We have worked hard to help clients when things go wrong by specialising both in the fast-moving nature of cross-border investigations, which are typically being driven from the US, while also integrating our disputes offering more closely with the corporate practice.

GC: What are some of the issues international clients need to be aware of when it comes to facing a dispute with an Indonesian counterparty?

KP: My first advice would be to settle disputes before they go to court or arbitration wherever possible. Of course, this is not always possible, but it is certainly worth exploring any avenues that can lead one away from a dispute to reach a mutually agreeable solution.

Mediation and other forms of ADR are recognised here but are neither common nor effective, and it can be a challenge to get an Indonesian party to consider settling. However, we work closely with our clients to explore all options and examine the likely costs of each course of action.

BB: Most disputes are driven by business teams. The commercial view is that if you can’t get what you want you go to court and try to win. We like to remind them that in order to do that they will need to spend time and money. Clients understand that disputes are expensive, but they rarely appreciate how time consuming and expensive they can be.

There can be a tendency for business to see things like employment-related matters as “not real disputes”, but even these can become very expensive if they are not handled properly. There is a temptation to think, “it’s just an employee, let’s go to court”, but the costs and timelines can spiral unpredictably.

Similarly, we advise businesses to be proactive when it comes to investigations as the processes can be quite unpredictable. For example, we were instructed by an oil and gas contractor based in the US to conduct an investigation into suspected bribery involving several of its employees. We teamed up with our colleagues in Singapore to interview their staffs and establish a case for termination. However, we quickly discovered that the alleged practices were not confined only to those employees facing investigation but were in fact prevalent across most of the sales division. What started as a relatively contained FCPA compliance investigation became a systemic problem for the business involved.

KP: The next most important consideration is to determine whether you are going for litigation or arbitration. Our position is generally to push for arbitration, particularly when advising entities based outside Indonesia, as it is less complex and has a more certain timeframe. It is also safer – arbitral awards can be enforced in Indonesia while court judgements generally cannot be enforced.

In terms of selecting a seat we recommend that our clients based outside of Indonesia push to have their disputes settled at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) or Indonesia’s arbitration centre – Badan Arbitrase Nasional Indonesia (BANI). Both have a good list of arbitrators, including many who are internationally recognised, but it is often preferable for international businesses to seek a neutral jurisdiction.

In Conversation: Rupert Skellett, General Counsel, Beggars Group

GC: Tell us about your pathway into law?

Rupert Skellett (RS): I initially read English Literature at University and ended up working in book publishing for Penguin. But, I decided that wasn’t for me, and I felt that I needed some kind of “skill” that would make me employable: I was great at analysing and reading literature, but, not really much else. So, I completed a law degree at City University of London and then went to bar school and then a commercial set of chambers. When my pupillage finished, I didn’t fancy going to the bar, so I managed to get a job in Simkins, in their music department. I was there for a year or so.

Then, I went to work for a sole practitioner- James Rubenstein- who worked from his flat in West Hampstead, which was a bit weird, but it was great because it was very hands on sort-of- training: I’d sit about two yards away from him in his office. His clients included a few record labels, one of which was Domino, and another was Beggars. I ended up doing a lot of Beggars’ work. So when Martin Mills, the owner of Beggars, decided he wanted an in-house person, I’d already been doing the job for a couple of years and essentially, I was the natural choice. I will have been at Beggars for 20 years in January.

GC: Tell us about your work day, what items fall under the realm of legal at Beggars Group?

RS: Well for me, the priority of the work is to find new recording artists to sign. That is basically the goal, the one thing we all strive for. What we try and do is sign independent, alternative music and that’s generally UK or US based. Although, that is slightly changing in recent years. The idea is: that we don’t find acts which we think are going to sell loads and loads, instead we sign acts because we like them; we think they’re interesting; and we think that people should hear them. That’s the most exciting part because you go to see an act play live, and then hopefully you negotiate with them and sign them. So, that’s obviously a big part of the job: negotiating the terms of the deal and drafting the recording agreement. A lot of my work, apart from negotiation, is drafting in-house, probably more so than private practice. It’s a specialism, certainly for a music in-house role.

GC: What’s involved in the negotiation stage?

RS: You’ll often be in competition with a bunch of other labels, the artist’s lawyer will be representing the artist and then they will be representing various terms they have in other offers from other labels to you. Then, you have to decide whether you want to match them or not. There are things we can offer that other labels can’t: we very much pride ourselves on being a global company and that means we’re able to offer a really good deal to artists, because none of the revenue we receive goes through an inter-company royalty matrix—which other major labels operate. This is our distinct advantage.

We also sign far fewer acts than other major labels in order to really concentrate on each act. The way we’re set up is that we have our own people on the ground in every major record market in the world–who only work on our releases. We can bring a real focus to pushing, promoting and marketing our artists, much more so than other major labels. If you sign to a major label in the UK, you don’t really have much assurance, that you as an artist, are going to get any priority when your record is released in the US: you basically have to try and persuade your UK label to convince your US label to get behind you. Whereas, with us, it’s much more top-down. The company is run from New York and London, what we sign is prioritised throughout the world.

GC: You’ve been working for Beggars Group for around 20 years now, how has the music industry changed in those years?

RS:  The industry has changed massively in the last twenty years. For a long time, it was in the doldrums. For the first 15 years of this century, the global record industry kept on going down and down, to the point where it basically became half of what it was in the heyday years of the 90’s, with CD’s and the rest of it. The problem was piracy. Piracy was a huge problem which came with the internet. There were attempts in the early 2000’s to license various services and they didn’t really get off the ground. So, for a long time we were fighting piracy and tech companies who didn’t value rights in the same way that we do- so that was a real problem. But, since 2015, the global record industry started to grow again and that’s down to the streaming services—Spotify initially, then Apple Music and Deezer, for example.

GC: Tell me more about these streaming services, how have they changed the market?

RS: Spotify specifically– because it provides a free service and has basically removed any need for anyone to pirate any music. There’s no real excuse to pirate and it’s a lot more convenient. Still, there’s a certain amount of technological knowhow that you need to pirate music. However, things the music industry has been doing, in terms of blocking pirate sites, has helped. Trying to get search engine companies to cooperate with that, is quite tough. So, that’s what I was saying about trying to persuade tech companies to play nice with rights. That’s been a major challenge, but there are signs that is improving. But, it’s down to those efforts in the industry and also the availability of companies like Spotify, who have a great service—you basically have all of the world’s music at your fingertips, in a nice, easy way to find music.

GC: You mentioned piracy a past challenge to the music industry, what are the current challenges that you face today as a GC?

RS: What’s really interesting about today, is that when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I was really into dance and house music. And, you couldn’t get it anywhere—it was really hard—there were a few record shops in London—a handful outside of London, there were barely any radio stations—and that was really exciting. But, now you have the exact polar opposite problem, you don’t have scarcity, you have too much content—so much content. Every day, hundreds of thousands of tracks are uploaded on Spotify.

GC: That must be quite difficult for you when you’re searching for talent, there’s so much content out there, where do you begin?

RS: This concerns going down the path of monitoring data. That’s obviously quite easy to do now, because there’s so much data out there and so many data collecting systems. Other record labels quickly initiate their flagging systems for anything that looks as if it’s doing quite well and they just sign whatever is on that data system. Whereas, we still definitely operate on the basis of seeing the artist play live, meeting them, getting a feel for their vision and obviously whether we love their music or not. So, the massive challenge is, even if you do sign the artist, how do you get that artist content above the tidal wave of other content that’s out there? That’s something that we’re really good at, because we are quite niche, and we have this global army of fans who promote an artist’s music. That is the real challenge now: the enormous amounts of content generated, which is down to cheaper recording processes and distribution. I mean, anyone can upload content, get a distribution partner and then have your music up on Spotify.

GC: Has social media had an impact on the growth of an artist?

RS: Social media is very important to an artist’s career now. But, you can experience a problem where you’re massive on social media but that doesn’t translate into consumption or sales of recorded music. So, you need to be careful that you tie them all together properly. There’s a lot of “well, why you can’t do this?” promotion, and it’s a constant battle between “promotion” and rights exploitation, and getting paid for rights exploitation. If you’re exploiting rights, you need to pay for them, because that’s our business and that’s what we thrive on.

GC: You spoke earlier of royalties and licenses. What’s the role that you play in the acquisition of a song?

RS: We have a publishing company, but we, the record company, handle the recordings—this is a separate copyright to the song itself. So, our music publishing company handles rights and acquires rights to songs. They sign song writers to exclusive song writing agreements. I’m involved in that side of things: the signing of song writers, in much of the same way as the record side; helping negotiate terms with the publishing company and then drafting the agreements. But, in terms of licensing songs, for instance, if someone were to use one of the songs in a TV program, or in a computer game, then we have a global licensing department who handles those things.

GC: You said that you work with alternative music, so you have a couple of clients from the UK grime scene, who have in the past, been faced with criminal allegations, how do you deal with that? What are the ramifications when clients face criminal proceedings?

RS: We’re as supportive as possible, where we can be. Mostly this is an issue for the manager and the artist lawyer, not us as the label.  But I do remember that with Giggs, when we were about to sign him in 2006, the Metropolitan Police phoned us up and told us not to sign him. But, we went ahead anyway, because, we thought it was wrong to deny him of the chance of generating a professional career as a recording artist. Yes, people might make mistakes, but you have to give them a chance to change, it didn’t make any sense for us to say: “you’re going to be punished for the rest of your life for something you did when you were younger.”

GC: If you could give yourself one piece of advice at the start of your career, after you qualified with your law degree, what would that be?

RS: Be careful what you wish for.

In Conversation: Dan Webster, Group General Counsel, Harrods

GC: Tell me about your pathway into law?

Dan Webster (DW): I studied law at the London School of Economics and went to law school in Chester. I got a training contract at what is now CMS Cameron McKenna. I qualified in litigation, stayed a couple of years at CMS and then then moved to SNR Dentons. I stayed there for a few years and then decided I wanted a change. To my surprise, an opportunity came up to be an in-house litigator at Harrods where the then owner was famously very litigious. Once at Harrods, I quickly realised that I was meant to be an in-house lawyer, and over time, I’ve evolved into a commercial, corporate, employment, IP all-rounder.

GC: Could you tell me a little about that change from private practice to in-house law? How did you find that transition?

DW: I was brought in initially as an in-house litigator. It quickly became apparent that there was a demand for more general in-house work and perhaps less than a full time job available for litigation work. So, I was very happy to broaden my skillset, I wasn’t someone who wanted to stay specialised. I was very happy to become more like a legal equivalent of a GP—if I can make a comparison to the medical profession. The fact that you can kind of turn your mind to most legal tasks, I found that very interesting, and I really enjoyed the variety. Therefore, I really embraced the opportunity to try and be an all-rounder within an in-house practice, as opposed to a specialist litigator.

GC: What does your role as an ‘all-rounder’ at Harrods entail?

DW: I oversee the legal function for the entire Harrods group. This includes commercial, corporate, IP, marketing and consumer work. I look after all the company secretarial work for the group too. I’m also data protection officer, which is probably quite unusual for a GC. I oversee all the GDPR related work. I’m also responsible for the trade mark and domain name portfolio.

GC: Tell me a little about your team and how they assist in the aforementioned work?

DW: I’ve got five lawyers, a contract manager and a paralegal (who we are currently recruiting). In addition to that, I’ve got responsibility for the data protection team, which is currently two professionals. I try to lead by example: by working hard and by having high standards. I tend not to micromanage and let talent flourish. I always seek to be approachable and supportive and to make work enjoyable for my team.

GC: What is a typical working day like for you?

I’m not sure that there is a typical working day, but this is one of the great things about being an in-house lawyer—it’s not repetitive and it’s unpredictable. You learn to expect the unexpected. You might come into work with a list of tasks you’d like to get done that day, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll actually get through that list without the phone ringing repeatedly with queries and urgent tasks you’ve not anticipated. So, a lack of predictability is something which is a reality of being an in-house lawyer—but also one of the best things about being an in-house lawyer.

GC: How has your role as a GC changed throughout your time in the industry?

DW: I think the volume of work to be done has grown. There’s much more multitasking to do and perhaps a wider appreciation of the GC role and the legal function.

As I mentioned earlier, the legal department at Harrods absorbed the previous company secretary department and I’ve been appointed data protection officer. So, the GC role from my perspective, has become broader and more compliance focused. Even aside of my role as data protection officer, the legal work relating to data protection and data security has become a much bigger consideration during my period as a GC.

As I said, the Harrods business has grown, and so has the volume of legal work. There’s also been a shift towards keeping more of the work in-house and towards upskilling, rather than outsourcing. As a result, the legal team which I manage, has grown and all of us have had to become more versatile and more efficient.

I’ve noticed that during my period as a GC here, the legal department is increasingly seen as more of a general value-add, rather than just a legal function. We often take on more of a general role in the business projects we work on, rather than being limited simply to providing legal advice.

Being a GC is hard work and I don’t think it’s the easy option, when compared to private practice, if it ever was.

GC: Tell me about how you’re planning to use technology in your field?

DW: Another thing that’s sort of changed, is that we now have more of a focus on technology. Indeed, at Harrods, we’re currently trialling a contract management tool. It’s very early stages, but one of the contracts which we use repeatedly is a concession contract: we have many, many companies that operate concessions—effectively shop-in-shops— in Harrods, and it’s a complicated commercial arrangement. We have a fairly long concession contract. So, we are trialling technology which allows us to populate a precedent concession contract based on various different options, depending on the specific commercial deal you’ve struck on with a concession. The idea is that it will save us a lot of time and provide greater efficiency. But, as I’ve said, it’s quite a complicated agreement to do through a contract management tool. We are in the early stages, so it would be much too early to say whether it is a success or not.

GC: Could you tell me a little more about the work you do concerning trade marking?

DW: Well, Harrods has around 700 trademarks throughout the world. We need to protect our brand which obviously is very valuable. It’s one of the most famous brands out there and definitely one of the most famous retail brands in the world. The trademark acts as a deterrent to other organisations using our brand without our permission. It also means that if someone does try and use our brand without our permission, we’re able to enforce our trademark to stop this infringement.

GC: You spoke about your role within data protection, tell me about this?

DW: Companies the size of Harrods are required to appoint a data protection officer, and I took on that role for Harrods. I was appointed in the period before GDPR came into force. Therefore, I was involved in helping to manage the GDPR compliance project along with a data protection team. I am now responsible for the ongoing GDPR compliant operation of the Harrods organisation—assisted by the data protection team and plenty of other people within the Harrods organisation.

GC: Going off the back of that, is compliance a challenge for you and your team?

DW: I’ve talked about the company secretarial role and those challenges, but, we’ve got additional regulation in other areas as well. We have annual reporting obligations required by the Modern Slavery Act, and since 2019, we’ve got governance reporting obligations courtesy of the Companies (Miscellaneous Reporting) Regulations 2018. We’re also helping to prepare Harrods for the imminent introduction of IR35 which will impact on private companies who instruct consultants. As GC, I also attend the annual audit committee meeting and work closely with our internal audit and anti-money laundering team. Overall, there’s quite a lot of compliance work involved in my role, and that of the wider legal team.

GC: What are the current challenges you face at Harrods at the moment?

DW: The business never sleeps, so it’s genuinely a constant challenge—but, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The work-life balance can be an issue, but it focusses you to be efficient in the way that you work.

As well as business as usual, there’s always one or more major project to work on. At the moment, we’ve got a store-wide refurbishment project; we’ve been collaborating with Farfetch.com in relation to the new Harrods.com website; and we have two new business we are trialling away from the store: H Café and H Beauty.

Two years ago, one of the projects concerned divesting ourselves of four non-retail subsidiaries. All of these deals were being worked on simultaneously and in fact all of them completed around Christmas 2017, which was a memorable juggling act.

GC: What is in the pipeline for Harrods?

DW: We’re nearing the last stages of the store refurbishment project, we’ve recently reopened our food halls and a state of the art new beauty room. We’re revamping our chocolate room very shortly. We’re re-platforming the Harrods.com website which will be launching early this year. We’re trialling an H Café concept in Henley, which is both a café and a click-and-collect location, with changing rooms upstairs. We’ll be opening two H Beauty shops this year, this is a very exciting new beauty concept and effectively a new brand which we’re building from scratch.

GC: What have been the high points whilst working at Harrods?

DW: I’ve been very luck to work here during a period of rapid change, which has bought Harrods success and growth. Throughout this period there’s been drive, ambition and innovation. I’ve been very fortunate to be in the organisation at this time. Some recent highlights include the projects I’ve mentioned earlier. But another high point is my current team—I’m very lucky to have such talented and dedicated colleagues.

GC: If you could go back in time, when you were starting off your career in law, what would you tell yourself?

DW: I’d say try and get an in-house secondment as a trainee or junior solicitor. This will give you an early insight into both sides of the legal profession: private practice and in-house. This will help you plot your career path and give you a valuable insight into how businesses really work.

In Conversation: Alex Scudamore, head of legal, Wimbledon – The All England Lawn Tennis Club (Championships) Limited

GC: Could you tell us about your pathway into law?

Alex Scudamore (AS): I read French and German at Bristol University, and then completed the law conversion course. Prior to starting that, I took the usual route of looking at different options in terms of what I might want to do. I ended up completing a vacation scheme at Macfarlanes LLP. Off the back of that, I was offered a training contract. I then completed the law conversion course and LPC. It was after this that my training and career at Macfarlanes started.

GC: How did you move in-house?

AS: I was in the commercial team at Macfarlanes. The department was broad in terms of the areas of law covered – anything from commercial contractual work, to IP, to brand protection and data protection. I was therefore geared up in a very commercial way. I was then sent on a secondment, initially to a card payment processing company – an industry I was not particularly familiar with. It started off as a three-month secondment, but ended up being nine months in total. It was semi-virtual, with half the time spent in their offices out in Cambridgeshire, and the other half of the time spent back at Macfarlanes. So my first taste of in-house life came when I was a year-and-a-half qualified. I then went back to Macfarlanes’ commercial department to carry on there. It was after this that an additional secondment opportunity came up at CSM, a sports marketing company. I enjoyed the opportunity so much that I ended up never going back to Macfarlanes. I ended up remaining at CSM for four and a half years.

GC: How did you come to be head of legal at the AELTC?

AS: I was very happy working in the sports marketing company. But, for me, the appeal of the AELTC was working for a rights holder, as a lawyer. When working for an agency, you’re unable to give external legal advice to your sporting clients – whether that be brands or players, you’re always at a slight distance. I was starting to think about my next move and the appeal of Wimbledon was obvious – it’s such a strong property, it’s such a strong brand, it’s established in the sporting world, and therefore an opportunity that I just couldn’t turn away.

I began as head of legal at the AELTC in September 2018. Before me, the AELTC never had a full-time in-house resource and instead used a combination of retained legal resource (via Kerman and Co.,) and other external firms. But the time was finally right to have that full-time, day-to-day legal resource, so I was brought in as the only full-time lawyer, as head of legal.

GC: What’s a typical working day for you?

AS: I would say no day is the same and the work is extremely broad. I mean, I certainly haven’t been bored since I’ve started working here, there’s been a steady workflow. There will usually be several major contracts on the go at any one time. These could be anything from a renewal with one of our key official suppliers, to queries that arise from broadcast arrangements, IP protection, ticketing issues and data protection. Recently, I’ve been doing a great deal of work on the grass court season that the AELTC has been investing in.

GC: Tell me about Wimbledon’s grass court strategy?

AS: We have invested in developing our grass court strategy. The aim of this is ultimately to provide world-class opportunities for junior players to compete on—and thrive on—grass, at all stages of their development. We’ve obviously got a Grand Slam event here, but there are many tournaments in Europe which form part of the women’s and men’s professional tours. These are very important, as we want to give players the best opportunity to play on grass. In that three-week gap between Roland-Garros, which is played on clay, and Wimbledon, which is played on grass, we have created a grass court series for the world’s top 150 players. We’ve announced a series of strategic investments to strengthen this season. We have also acquired sanctions to stage those tournaments. But, whether it’s been by way of acquiring sanctions or obtaining rights, in relation to the staging of the tournaments, we’re working with tournament delivery partners in the various territories to deliver these events.

GC: What’s legal’s role within the formation of contracts with your sponsors?

AS: If it’s a new official supplier (sponsor) deal, you will be brought into some of the earlier discussions, so around the heads of terms that might be agreed. You’re also brought in materially a little later on. We’re responsible for putting together our ‘official supplier’ agreement. We now have a standard form agreement that we will populate, often followed by some degree of negotiation. The agreement takes the form of your main body of legal terms and a schedule of rights setting out the rights that our official suppliers are getting. This is a standard structure in rights deals.

If you have a renewal of an existing agreement, then there may be certain items that would have been renegotiated commercially, so it would be our responsibility to work with the commercial team to negotiate these agreements.

Earlier on this year, we entered into a new partnership with OPPO – the Chinese mobile phone company. We haven’t worked with a Chinese partner before in the context of an official supplier arrangement, so this was an exciting new deal which also covers an entire new product category.

GC: How have you developed your skills during your time in the industry?

AS: As a lawyer, this is something that happens naturally – I have become much more strategic in a way which enables me to advise in a more commercial way. Having that ability to step away from the pure legal and really understand – to get under the skin of the business – greatly helps. Of course, you still must be that academic lawyer in many senses but I think, certainly in-house, you have a need to be both commercial and practical. You don’t want to be seen as the deal prohibitor in the organisation, you must be the enabler.

GC: Would you say that being a ‘business enabler’ is an advantage of working in-house?

AS: Yes, 100%. When you’re in private practice in a law firm, you have a variety of clients and, to a certain extent, you’re at an arm’s length from their day-to-day business. But, coming in-house, your ultimate main client is the business itself. You are there to protect – and have a credible working understanding of how the business works – whether that be financially or strategically. You also must be able to juggle the various different stakeholders within the business: from your senior board members – the executive board and here, at the AELTC, the committees, made up of members of the All England Club. You must balance those stakeholders within the business, but you must also be able to work with everybody – this includes those involved in the ‘on the ground’ delivery of The Championships. Though, for me, it’s the variety. There’s an awful lot that goes on to ultimately stage one of the best – well, we think The best – Grand Slam event in the world. As head of legal, you have a key role in making sure that you are doing everything in your power to protect the business.

GC: What sorts of challenges are you facing, or have you faced, working at Wimbledon?

AS: I think it’s getting to grips with the business – and that naturally does take time. You may have to deal with legal issues which you haven’t necessarily come against or had much exposure to before. Certainly for me at the AELTC, the area of broadcast has been a new area for me – from a pure commercial understanding, but also legally – so we’ve been working with external parties on that. It’s getting to grips with new areas – you definitely have to learn on the job. It’s not a case of looking things up in a book: reading a case isn’t necessarily going to help you, you’ve got to develop practical learning.

In my role, I would also say that it’s probably been juggling the number of different matters that require my attention legally. You also have to develop a deep understanding of broader issues in the tennis context, from a wider, global perspective. You need to grasp how the various other tennis organisations (like the professional tours for men and women, the WTA and ATP, for example) function and interact. This is very important for us as a Grand Slam event, so for me, the biggest challenge has been understanding how everything ultimately fits together.

I think as an organisation our biggest challenges are compliance related. We are delivering a major sporting event, with hundreds of thousands of people who visit the grounds, so one of our biggest challenges is security. Fortunately, we have great internal and external teams who focus on that. I think for me, it’s also certainly GDPR and data protection. We need to make sure that this continues to remain at the forefront of our focus as an organisation.

Also, there was an independent review into the sport of tennis from an integrity perspective. Since the Tennis Integrity Unit has been established, the AELTC has been actively involved in this to make sure we are upholding the highest levels of integrity in our Grand Slam event and, indeed, these new tournaments that we are now involved in.

GC: What have you enjoyed most during your time at the AELTC so far?

AS: The AELTC is growing at such a pace and we can’t afford to be complacent. We’ve acquired the Wimbledon Park Golf Club that is situated across Church Road from us – that ultimate expansion is very exciting. Further expanding our investment into the grass court tennis season has been a new thing for the AELTC – it’s been a new experience for me too. I’ve had to develop an understanding of how the ATP and WTA sanctions to stage tournaments work. Aside from some of the highlights mentioned, for me, it’s the ability to work with a range of people, and the exposure that I’ve been given within the organisation has been great. It’s pretty interesting for a lawyer here – you’re not kept siloed in your little box in an office tucked away, you are out there speaking to people. I’d like to think that I’ve become, or I am becoming, that trusted adviser within the organisation, which is what any in-house lawyer should strive to be.

GC: You mentioned the rights to stage such tournaments. Could you tell me a little more about these?

AS: It’s about making sure that the agreements we’ve got to stage these grass court events are robust enough to allow us to do what we want to do. We’ve had to juggle quite a few different parties – because on one hand, you must make sure that you’re acting in accordance with ATP or WTA rules (which govern how these tournaments must operate). Then, on the other hand, you’ve also got to manage the relationship with the entities that are delivering these tournaments on the ground. So, there has been some back-to-backing in these agreements: making sure that we’re not giving third-party rights in relation to the tournament, which we ourselves do not have. That has been quite important from a legal perspective because there’s a real balancing act around those protections.

GC: What’s in the pipeline for the AELTC?

AS: We’re continuing to invest in The Championships, which is the pinnacle of the sport of tennis. The investment in the grass court tennis season instils the love of the game in people and, ultimately, the ambition to play at Wimbledon at a young age. We also have the acquisition of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club – that was a very important moment for us in terms of our master plan for the future. We’re investing in our environmental sustainability too. Continually trying to improve and never becoming complacent is key for us.

GC: How important was mentorship for you, as you developed within your own legal career?

AS: I think it’s important to have a mentor, especially from an in-house perspective. This need not necessarily be a lawyer, but someone you can learn from in a career development perspective – someone who’s got experience of working in different organisations. Personally I don’t particularly like these female forums, because I think it actually highlights barriers which shouldn’t exist – and don’t exist sometimes.

Speaking honestly, I don’t think there are any barriers that exist for women getting into the in-house legal profession. I certainly haven’t encountered them. I think you get roles, in my experience, based on merit – and that’s the way it should be. I think one thing that I would say is that you do need to have an added confidence – I mean, certainly being in the sport sector, it has traditionally been a male-dominated industry. I think that you need to have the confidence to speak – if you’re in a boardroom with senior executives who are all men, you shouldn’t be put off by that, but certainly I haven’t seen any barriers from my side.

I think mentorship is a good thing. I think if you’re in a law firm, there is an obvious hierarchy, and naturally it is important to talk to those people who are further on in their careers about how they got there. I think this somewhat slightly changes in the in-house world. It’s helpful to have a network of other in-house lawyers to openly talk to about the challenges that you might be facing and how you go about progression – because the in-house career path is not as obvious as private practice, so to speak. I’m a lawyer for a rights holder; it is important to have a network of other lawyers in a similar position, because there’s naturally learning that you can take from other sporting rights holders.

GC: If you could go back to the start of your law career and give yourself some advice, what would that be?

AS: Stick at it. When you’re in private practice, the hours can be long (the hours are still long sometimes). I think that it can be a bit of a shock, initially. When I finished law school, I was in a corporate firm, doing pretty long hours. But, stick at it. Enjoy the learning.

I would also say have a think and take a step back when it comes to deciding what particular area of law you want to go in to. Don’t qualify into a particular department because of the people alone (although it naturally helps) – it needs to be an area that you’re truly interested in. Fortunately for me, it has been an area that I was interested in. But I’m not sure if I necessarily appreciated that back when I was choosing where I wanted to qualify. I knew I enjoyed being a commercial lawyer. But I don’t think that I appreciated how important that decision was at the time and how it would shape my career. Being a commercial lawyer has been absolutely brilliant because I’ve had the flexibility of starting off in private practice and then being able to go in-house, which has hugely suited me.

In Conversation: Ria Sanz, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Compliance and Company Secretary, AngloGold Ashanti

GC: Could you tell me about your current role, and your journey to where you are now?

Ria Sanz (RS): I’m currently Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Compliance and Company Secretary for AngloGold Ashanti (AGA).  I’ve been at the company for almost nine years, but I’ve served as general counsel of publicly listed companies for 21 years, in range of industries including industrial gases, private healthcare, paper /pulp/chemical cellulose and more.

As head of sustainability at Sappi, a paper company, I became closely familiar with the importance of responsible and ethical business practices across a number of contexts. This role helped with my transition into the mining sector, given the diverse and extensive group of stakeholders in the industry.

I have a great legal team at AngloGold Ashanti. We work as a team to support the objectives of the business through close collaboration and involvement with our colleagues. We’ve built up a strong compliance function and programme which was implemented over the last five or six years. As a result, we’ve been successful in avoiding any significant compliance issues. This is important since we deal with governments at all levels, from presidents to mayors and other local government officials. It is critical to ensure that our people have a strong understanding of what is legally unacceptable behaviour. We are guided by our values and believe that, in order to maintain our social license to mine, we need to be a good corporate citizen and partner in the jurisdictions in which we operate.

GC: You’re on the Executive Committee and you occupy a very senior role within the business. Worldwide, that seems quite rare for legal personnel, although it’s becoming more common. Was that always the case since you joined, and is that a symptom of the industry you’re in or is that just the culture within the company?

RS: When I joined I was, I believe, the first group general counsel and member of the executive committee that reported directly to the CEO. As the general counsel, I believe you need a seat at the table so that you are well-informed, otherwise you are going to be fighting with one arm behind your back. We operate in complex environments with risks around litigation, class actions, disclosure and instances where just saying something without a comprehensive understanding could have significant legal implications. So yes, I would hope that it’s increasingly understood that the general counsel does need to be a member of the executive.

GC: When you took over the role, was there a period of adjustment and defining boundaries and relationships?

RS: Definitely, it’s normal for it to take time to get the right team in place, put in the work to ensure that the key legal matters are understood and establish one’s role and voice at the table. I’ve also been very lucky that I’ve had good support from the CEOs and members of the executive team.

GC: As far as the role itself goes, since it was a new role, were you able to define the role profile more than you would have otherwise?

RS: That’s one of the advantages when there isn’t a history of the role in place. Senior roles are, to a certain extent, also driven by personalities. People’s strengths differ, even in the same role, and businesses evolve, so I think it’s natural for roles and responsibilities to change over time.

Industries have changed significantly, too. For example, when I was with Sappi and I was asked to head up sustainability in 2007, it was not something that either shareholders or other stakeholders had such an interest in as they do now.

I believe that strong legal people need to be able to adapt in order to contribute towards the strategic objectives of the business.

GC: I imagine that influences the kind of people you hire to report to you directly. In South Africa, is there a good pool of in-house lawyers that can fulfil that role or is it a struggle to find the talent?

RS: Mining is a well-established industry in South Africa, so there is a good pool of talented people. We are also a global organisation and, as such, would look across the globe for talent.

I think more and more people find mining to be an interesting and dynamic field of work. I think younger people want to work for companies that have souls and an opportunity to make a difference.

GC: Speaking broadly about the mining sector, you touched on the fact that you have all of the issues and stakeholders that other industries have, and more. Was there an adjustment period?

RS: Yes, there was. This role has been by far the most challenging and interesting. You eat, drink and breathe the industry,  the company, and the role. It’s a 24/7 industry and, as such, requires a lot of dedication.

I think all of my experiences through the years placed me in quite a good position to take on this role. It was overwhelming to start with, but I had a great team of people that had been in the organisation for some time in addition to having a supportive CEO and executive team. A lot of these people are still in the organisation and I was fortunate to be welcomed and helped – so that made the transition easier.

GC: What do you think is the biggest challenge specific to the mining industry that the legal team faces?

RS: I think it’s the challenge of keeping up with a rapidly changing regulatory environment – and quickly having to understanding the impact that those changes will have on the business in the short, medium and long term.

GC: Is it difficult to keep your finger on the  pulse in many different regions?

RS: I think that mining has significant commonality across jurisdictions. The fact that governments expect a return on the resources is something that is common, communities look to us for employment and for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) projects. The themes are very much aligned. It’s the implementation that can change from one jurisdiction to another – how you participate with communities; which projects would be most impactful; and how these initiatives are implemented. It is important to understand the jurisdiction and proactively manage the expectations of governments and other stakeholders.

GC: Do you have a team in every jurisdiction, or in some of them are you relying on external advisers locally?

RS: We have legal representation in each of the countries where we operate. The complement is determined by the needs and complexity of the country and the operation, and the types of interactions they are likely to have, i.e. some might interact more with the local regulators, while others with the national government officials together with the corporate team as well.

GC: In terms of the legal systems you’re operating in, I imagine there’s a spectrum, from very well-defined legal systems and regulations to jurisdiction where things aren’t quite as formal, or even stable. How do you grapple with that?

RS: I wouldn’t say that’s exactly true anymore, certainly not in the jurisdictions where we are. Large-scale mining and gold mining are at different stages in different countries. But many of the jurisdictions have had mining activities – whether it’s gold or another resource – for an extended period. More and more governments have well-resourced and experienced people that understand mining. This helps tremendously in our engagements with governments.

GC: Is it easy to keep policies consistent across the board in every jurisdiction that you’re operating in?

RS: If I’m looking at the compliance side – because we are also listed on the New York Stock Exchange and in Australia and Ghana, not just in South Africa –the need to make sure  we’re not in breach of any bribery, corruption or ethical issues, means we do apply policies across the group. It is key that those policies are developed in conversation with individuals in the group. This enables the practical application of the key principles and allows for operating consistency in a number of areas.

GC: I suppose that links to what you were saying before about the business having core values?

RS: That’s right. And also, the reality is that anything that happens in Ghana will impact on how people see you in Colombia. The importance of having a consistent set of operating values, no matter where we are and even if it is to a much higher standard than the local regulation dictates, is key.

GC: Do you set the vision for the legal team on a yearly basis or a multi-year basis? I imagine that the business environment changes quite quickly?

RS: We’ve recently had a re-look at our operation model across the organisation and have made some changes to our team’s structure. I believe this is something that needs to be revised periodically and requires regular attention, even if no changes are made.

GC: Looking ahead to the next five or even ten years, is there anything that you see coming round the corner that may impact the work that you do?

RS: I think there are going to be increased risks caused by external factors. There’s climate change – with increased rainfall,   higher temperatures and rapid population growth: we have to contemplate the impact this might have to our equipment and operating environment. Mining often has a large footprint, so are we going to need to be in dialogue with farmers and other industries for both access and ensuring the preservation of land and the environment.

Technology changes will be another area that I think will continue to gather momentum. We will need to consider the impacts to mining and our production, costs and employment model.

GC: I imagine that you have to keep an eye on the political situation globally, which obviously now is changing a lot?

RS: The political landscape is something we already look at carefully. We often need to make significant capital investment decisions with long-dated returns on capital that need to survive potential changes in the operating landscape.  For example, if a project has a six year payback period and every four years there is a presidential election that tends to come with significant changes in that jurisdiction, we have to consider the risk factors in making a decision on that project.

There are jurisdictions in which we operate now that I didn’t visit in my first five or six years at AngloGold Ashanti because they were politically stable. However, the second there’s change on the political front I visit.

GC: Is there any way that you can safe guard against that?

RS: I think, like always, you’ve got to look at the returns through a lens that considers risk and reward, like in any business. As a management team, it is our job to manage the risks to the best of our ability. We do our part to safeguard the business and its investors from this risk by maintaining a pulse on the political landscape, along with working to mitigate social, environmental and other risks through our approach. Our compliance and oversight measures help to ensure that this work is done.

GC: Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?

RS: I was talking yesterday with a colleague in another mining company, and she referred to mining being an old boys club. It’s still an old boys club and women still need to be better represented. Diversity in every sense is something that we, as an organisation, see as very important. Not only when it comes to our recruitment practices, but also in the law firms that we use. Encouraging our external advisers to also strive for diversity is, I think, another way we can push for change. That is one aspect we need to continue to work on.

GC: Have you found that law firms are increasingly using diversity as a selling point to you?

RS: It is one of the points that comes across in conversations with the law firms, particularly the topic of fair pay. Law firms, though, are realising that salary parity is something their clients find important. Hopefully they see it as the right thing to do and a key business imperative. It is something that I think we, as their clients, are well placed to influence.

 GC: Is it hard for you to assess how effective the law firms are in their diversity and inclusion pushes?

RS: It’s good to understand what programmes firms have in place. I think more and more of them do have initiatives and are progressing in the areas of inclusion and diversity.

But I do find myself also becoming more vocal. Where I see no diversity I’m now having conversations with senior partners and even driving the makeup of teams that work with us. I can have an impact through doing that. It’s also my responsibility to do it. I would expect my stakeholders to be impressing on me to have diversity in my team as well.

In Conversation: Othelia Langner, head of legal and compliance (Southern Africa and SSA), Medtronic

Othelia Langner is speaking in her personal capacity, and not on behalf of Medtronic.

GC: Can you tell me about your current role and your career journey leading to it?

Othelia Langner (OL): I’m currently responsible for legal and compliance for the Southern African and Sub-Saharan regions.

I followed the ‘standard’ route to qualify as an attorney in South Africa, and then I had the opportunity to join Simmons & Simmons in London. During my time there, I went on secondment to UBS and Renaissance Capital in Moscow, and that is what initially sparked the interest in an in-house environment. My boss in Moscow took up a position as general counsel at a private equity holding company in Almaty in Kazakhstan and he asked me to join him, so I spent some time working there, and I really enjoyed it – it was very, very interesting.

When I was considering my next career move, I was offered the opportunity to come back to South Africa and join the South African office of Fasken, which worked out well because at the time I felt I was just a little bit too junior to go in-house full time. And so I went back into private practice, doing a lot of corporate commercial work in the mining space in South Africa and the rest of the African region, with a little bit in Central Asia.

I spent the next six years or so with Fasken, went through the ranks and made partner. And then Medtronic’s legal counsel resigned and they needed someone on very short notice. I’d just come back from maternity leave and it just aligned. I initially joined on secondment and then never left.

GC: Do you ever miss private practice?

OL: No. I love being in-house. It’s a completely different way of practising law, but – depending on the day! – I love the diversity, the intensity of it. I know in-house lawyers always say this, but you really get to know the business. You don’t practice law in isolation. Actually, the ‘business’ part of it is probably 70% and the strictly legal part maybe 20%. I don’t know what the other 10% is – human nature most likely!

Certainly at Medtronic, it’s a very collegial atmosphere, and I get to  do very interesting work so no, I can’t imagine going back to private practice.

GC: It’s interesting that you dipped your toe into in-house at first, then went back to private practice, and then back in-house.

OL: I was relatively junior (four years PQE) when I was exposed the in-house world. And, actually, it really helped going back into private practice having been in-house. I think all lawyers should ideally do a stint in-house for six months or a year.

GC: In-house skills are never really emphasised throughout law school. Do you think that it takes a certain kind of person to successfully transition in-house, or do you think everyone has it in them, it’s just a case of the right experiences?

OL: Whilst I think all lawyers can benefit from an in-house experience, some personality types may be more suited than others to working in-house. You have lawyers that are very particular about doing things in a very particular way – they want to really interrogate issues – whereas often in the in-house environment you have to make the best decision you can with the information you’ve got, often very quickly in high-pressure situations. You really have to be quite comfortable with assuming responsibility and perhaps (but hopefully not!) making the wrong call. I think the expectation of lawyers in private practice is that they don’t get the luxury of getting it wrong, because they are paid for their time to get it right. And some people are more or less comfortable with that kind of uncertainty and responsibility. I definitely think you can train for it, or at the very least, you can become more comfortable with it.

GC: You mentioned you felt you were perhaps too junior when the opportunity first presented itself to go in-house. When you did join Medtronic, did you feel confident that you were ready, or was there an adjustment period? What was that like?

OL: When I joined Medtronic, I was comfortable that I had the necessary technical skill, but also the gravitas and confidence to really engage with people at a management level.

You really are expected to be a business partner and to advise the business on bringing ideas to fruition and a key component of this is to appropriately manage risk. And when talking about risk, one has to bear in mind that risk can be much broader than, for example, the legal and financial risk that might result from an indemnity clause. It can encompass business risk, reputational risk and the risk of a loss of an opportunity. It would be amazing if you could do everything without any risk but that is not not a reality. And to determine which risks are acceptable, tolerable, given what you’re trying to achieve – I think from that point of view I was very much ready. But it was still a very big adjustment. To go from being able to take the time to really interrogate things to the level of detail you are comfortable with in private practice, to being comfortable with moving quickly – but not negligently or without due consideration – it’s a different dynamic.

GC: You inherited the department at quite short notice. Was it the exact same role to that of your predecessor?

OL: The department existed, and I think we all bring our own approaches to things so we have certainly evolved (not least because of the increasing complexity of the legal and regulatory landscape).

GC: Has the team, or the structure of the team, changed since then?

OL: I wouldn’t say the structure of the team has changed, but I think what we’ve really had to focus on is: with increased demand, how do we deploy the resources we’ve got to effectively address the needs of the business?

In private practice, you’re a revenue generator, whilst in-house you are a cost centre and so, as the business grows, there is often increased pressure on the department but not necessarily additional resources available. Which means you’ve got to look at how you work with those resources.

GC: I imagine that would be a real opportunity for you to develop the management skills that might be a bit less of a focus in private practice, by learning on the job.

OL: I think in private practice, it’s a very different dynamic. It’s much more hierarchical – you’ve got your junior candidate attorneys, your junior and senior, so you manage through the hierarchy. In-house, you’ve got to manage your team, but everyone is kind of semi-autonomous. Stakeholder management is probably the bigger challenge in-house, because you’ve got your team, your local and regional business teams, the regulatory team, the finance team, the quality team, the list goes on, and in a matrix organisation it is important that the right people are kept in the loop.

GC: On the subject of internal stakeholders, is that an ongoing piece of work for you – managing the profile, not just of yourself but also the team as a whole within the business?

OL: Medtronic’s vision includes being recognised as a company of dedication, honesty, integrity, and service, so the legal and compliance function is very highly valued and there’s quite a high degree of visibility and respect. I’ve never found that I’ve had to struggle to be heard because I’ve been able to build close relationships with the businesses I support.

GC: Do you think that’s reflective of the industry, or do you think that comes down to culture of the management of the board?

OL: It is a tough one to answer. I think in highly regulated industries, the importance of legal counsel and compliance counsel is easy to see, because you need someone who can help you navigate that. You can do that with external counsel, but that also involves someone in the business taking responsibility for that process and I think it makes a lot of sense to have that skillset in-house.

So depending on what your business need or goal is, the legal counsel function may play different roles: is it principally to keep you out of trouble? Is it principally to manage contracts? To execute the deals? In my position, it’s a far broader range of risks that we need to consider and manage and so we really are asked to be partners to the business.

GC: Would you say that regulation is the most challenging part of your job?

OL: A criticism that is sometimes levelled at lawmakers is that there may not always be the level of certainty or clarity that industry would want, and so it’s really about trying to navigate that. One way of managing this is to try to understand what the intent is; what the regulators are trying to achieve, and then you try and align with what you consider to be substantial compliance with this intent (rather than looking for loopholes). It can be challenging, but it’s not insurmountable.

GC: Is it difficult to communicate to the internal stakeholders the fact that you can’t give certainties?

OL: I think the thing when communicating with stakeholders is you’ve just got to be clear about the risks that they may be assuming. So you have to form a view. They want to know: can we do this? Should we do this? You can say: ‘Well, having looked at this, this and this, there is a risk that someone can make this argument. If they did make the argument, this is what would happen. We think that this is likely or not likely to happen. Are you comfortable doing this if that could happen? If yes, then that’s a risk we are prepared to assume, so how do we mitigate that? Is there anything else we can do to stop that happening?’

The business may not always have the expertise or the legal knowledge to be able to consider all the possible different structures, so that’s where you really partner with them to understand where they want to get to and how best to achieve it in a legal and compliant manner.

GC: Obviously the industry is highly regulated, but does it change often – are you grappling with new pieces of regulation?

OL: I’d say in the last three years we’ve probably had the biggest changes to the medical device regulations in the history of the industry, not least the amendments to the Medicines Act, which created quite a lot of uncertainty in terms of how they should be interpreted and applied. And when we were afforded the opportunity to provide comments, we made sure we did.

GC: To the regulators?

OL: Yes. For two of the most challenging provisions, operation has been suspended, initially for a year and now for a further three years, while they work through the comments and prepare new drafts.

GC: Would you say that the relationship between companies like yours and the regulators is a positive one – do they take comments like yours on board?

OL: I believe in the value of constructive relationships so it is important to me that when engaging with regulators this is done in a productive way. When it comes to issues that impact the industry as a whole, SAMED also plays a valuable role in escalating matters to the regulator.

GC: As technology advances, I imagine the nature of the products your company is supplying can change quite drastically, and might suddenly involve aspects of, for example, data privacy and cybersecurity, that might not previously have been issues. Do you find the nature of your concerns or priorities shifts as the work that comes across your desk changes?

OL: Indeed, technological advances mean that we need to stay on top of an ever evolving legal landscape too and I have definitely seen an increased focus on matters relating to data privacy and security. So I have had to develop my understanding of these areas, because whilst you can certainly rely on expert advice, you need to know how to work with it on a day-to-day basis.

GC: It seems like it would be difficult, in this industry, to split up the business into jurisdictions based on geography, because of the differences between regulators and what’s allowed in certain countries. Is that the case?

OL: When grouping geographical regions there are usually certain similarities in terms of market dynamics. However, when it comes to specifics on a country level, that’s usually something that would need to be considered on a country-by-country basis. When you are responsible for multiple countries, depending on the nature of the query, you can’t make assumptions that because something is a certain way in one jurisdiction, it is going to be the same in another. You have to ask a lot of questions, and the support and guidance of external counsel in the relevant jurisdictions is key.

GC: Compared to Europe, where there are many countries that are fairly similar, here you have countries right next door to each other that are vastly, vastly different.

OL: And that’s when that comfort with a degree of uncertainty is really important, because in developing markets there may be a disconnect between what the law says and how it is applied on the ground and you need to be able to find a way to work with those dynamics.

GC: Do you ever look at other industries that interest you?

OL: I get to work on really interesting, really complex, really high-level, challenging transactions and, added to that, I get to work for an organisation whose mission – “to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life” – truly resonates with me, so that will be hard to beat!

GC: It must have that added level of satisfaction and motivation.

OL: Our mission was written by our founder, Earl Bakken, and all these years later, we still have the same mission; it still informs how we do business (and I actually have it on the wall in my office). I’m really proud that in my small way I get to contribute to making a difference to patients’ lives. I’m very lucky.

GC: Just lastly, is there anything that you see coming in the next five years, be it specific to your industry, or your job, that you think will affect your role going forward?

OL: I think in-house legal counsel play a very important role in the business. I don’t see that falling away, but I do think that it is going to change, as it already has changed. Where the most complex legal matters used to go to external counsel, I think the breadth and depth of in-house skills and in-house capabilities will continue to be developed and enhanced, so you will really have in-house specialists. If I look at our organisation, the expertise and the quality of our in-house legal and compliance teams is just tremendous.

So yes, I believe that there’s going to be more and more emphasis on in-house legal being an integrated partner to the business and having a high level of technical expertise in-house. And with a lot of organisations facing huge pressures on driving down costs, I think there’s going to be a huge focus on making sure you get the right kind of candidate in the role so that they can execute effectively across a whole range of needs.

When it comes to technology, I’m interested to see how reliance on AI will evolve. At the moment, it would seem like more of a  possible concern to those in private practice, where there’s a lot more of the commoditised work. But, honestly, in the in-house environment, no two days are the same – so it will be a long time before AI can catch up.

That said, when it comes to adopting new technologies in the in-house environment, this too will continue to advance and will require us to constantly consider how we are doing what we do and whether there are tools that can enhance the value we provide. I believe that if we remember to regularly reflect on where we are and to challenge assumptions about how we have worked in the past, then I think we can, and will, evolve.

Michael Bruce

GC: How did you become involved with representing Procter & Gamble’s diversity and inclusion initiatives?

Earlier this year, I was invited to an external training session by MARC (Men Advocating for Real Change). It was very eye-opening for me because, as a man you might say ‘Sure, I’m all in favour of D&I and equality’, but what are you really doing? Is it just the idea you like, or are you actually doing something real to achieve equity and equality?

At this training, a lot of very interesting things were said – issues that men don’t even have to think about in their day-to-day lives, but that are commonplace for women. And that’s mostly what I took out of it and what helped me to try to better understand my peers, the women close to me, specifically on the employment side of the issue. The training happened during the week of International Women’s Day, and at the end of that week P&G was participating on a full-day panel with 13 or 14 other multinational companies here in Costa Rica. The event was organised by the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency, so it was a big event with close to 600 people attending. One of the IT managers that was participating in the MARC training and was one of the organisers of the Women’s Day event (as you can imagine, IT is way, way underrepresented on gender), reached out to me and said, ‘We have a slot, about ten minutes. Do you think you can prepare something that you can present?’ And I said, ‘Sure. Count me in.’ And that was my first presentation on the topic.

I opened my presentation by saying ‘“He is hormonal.” “He is so intense.” “He got the promotion because the company needed to balance the bands.” “Next time we cannot afford to hire a man for that role.” Those are some of the comments women face every day and men do not.’ I have been using that opening statement ever since. It grabs people’s attention. But it’s also very true. You never hear someone say ‘next time we cannot hire a man for that job. He just couldn’t cut it’. But you hear it about women every single day. And it’s extremely unfair, because competence has nothing to do with gender. Hypothetically I could be a terrible lawyer, way over my head with my role, and people won’t say ‘Oh, it’s because he’s a man’. They’ll say ‘Yes, he was a terrible lawyer; we completely mismanaged the hiring process,’ but my gender is never the issue.

So, that’s how it started and from there I have been invited to give talks to other companies on gender equity issues.

GC: You mentioned that you ‘fell into’ representing P&G on D&I issues, but does the company have a central function that deals with D&I?

Yes, we have what we call ‘pillars’, and D&I is one of them. It looks at many different challenges, one of which is women’s initiatives. Another which was started this year is a neurodiversity project, where we hired six individuals within the autism spectrum. We also have GABLE (Gay, Ally, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Transgender Employees), our LGBTQ network. I also do a little work with GABLE. With the women’s initiatives, as I said, it was just something I fell into, and it has been like putting on a glove. It fits me perfectly. It’s something I believe in, it’s something I feel is important, because I hear so many comments that are not okay.

“I go beyond diversity and inclusion, and I say we need to talk about equity and integration.”

After the first time I went to speak, someone told me that the event was featured in the news. And I thought ‘Oh, good!’ I went to the news programme’s Facebook page, and I found the posting, and I made the worst mistake anyone can make: I read the comments. And there was one that specifically stuck out to me. It was roughly ‘Oh, this is useless, everyone knows women go to social sciences, and men go into engineering, blah, blah, blah’. To me, this was so outrageous, thinking that this might be a parent, a brother – if there’s a young woman starting university wanting to go into science, engineering, maths, technology, and that’s the support they’re getting at home? That was one of the drivers for me to continue finding opportunities to discuss this issue, to show people that if you want to be a pre-school teacher, lawyer, psychologist, engineer – go for it. For me, I’ve never been told ‘you can’t do this; this will never be available to you’. For women, that is something they hear EVERY DAY. And I say that not just because I’m the father of a girl. I could have no children or be the father of ten boys. It would be the same. This is important and we need to change.

GC: How important is it to you that men act as male champions, and also as role models for other men (for example, by taking up opportunities for flexible working)?

It is so important, absolutely. For example, I do flex hours. When P&G started flexible work arrangements here (which was fifteen years ago), this was driven by six or so women who came forward and said ‘Listen, it is difficult for us to keep the same hours; are there any possibilities to work flexibly? We want to continue improving in the company, we still want to work, but we need flexibility’. The company looked into it, and that was it. Those first women were able to take flexible working, and the policy was definitely targeted towards mothers coming back from maternity, or those with young children. But by the following year, the first man had requested flexible working arrangements. And now, today, approximately 95% of the company is using at least one of the flexibility options we have: working from home, not working full-time, etc.

I use it, and I need it. I am divorced, and when I was going through that, it was really difficult for me. My manager at the time said ‘Listen, on Wednesdays, why don’t you leave early, go and pick up your kids from school and spend the afternoon with them, and when you’re able to at night, log back on and check in.’ And I have done that for the last five years.

Often, these working arrangements start because there’s been a reason for women to seek them out, but the beneficiaries are also men. And I think that as leaders we need to show other men that it is okay to leave early, to go to your kid’s soccer game, band presentation, teacher meeting – whatever it may be. As a man, you can do it. The more gear-shifting there is, the more men in senior positions do it, the more we have role models.

It’s just like we need to role model D&I. I go beyond diversity and inclusion, and I say we need to talk about equity and integration. Because that’s what we really need. We need to remove any obstacles that don’t allow someone to achieve equity. We need for everyone to be able to achieve the same, no matter who they are and where they come from.

GC: Do you feel or have you seen that the underlying culture across Latin America, which is quite patriarchal, stymies the take up of those policies?

Yes, definitely. I believe multinational companies have a responsibility to bring best practices to a country where they will eventually become the norm. This year, Costa Rica finally passed a law for flexible working. And why? Because there are so many more multinational companies now, and for them, it’s every day practice. The commerce chamber and associations were also pushing for it. It got enough traction that a law was passed.

One area that I see as low-hanging fruit for companies is paternity leave. You want to get good press for your company? Do paternity leave. It’s so easy. In Costa Rica, by law, mothers have the month before and three months after birth. But offering some type of paternal leave is an equaliser. Because if the conversation shifts from ‘Oh, this woman might one day leave to go on maternity leave’ to ‘Oh, anyone could one day take parental leave’ then it’s a great equaliser. We do it here at P&G, and we are working towards granting more time to fathers so that they can enjoy more time with their children and can help around the house. The president of Costa Rica was pushing for paternity leave and a group within government is working on it. Definitely some organisations and associations are against it, because the money comes from social security. I am completely in favour of it. And hopefully – while we won’t get the full three months – we might get to one month. It’s one of the things I like to talk about.

I talk about gender equity and why it’s important for companies and why we need a diverse workforce, but we also need to talk about the benefits for men of gender equity and more women being in the workforce and the impact is has on society and commerce – it generates more money for the economy. It helps men to move away from these patriarchal strictures: where men need to be the breadwinners, where you have to earn more than your wife or partner. There is a statistic that says women are more likely to try to commit suicide, but men are on average more likely to succeed – they use more brutal means to achieve it. Those suicides – where do they stem from? So often they come from economic problems. Men who lose jobs, men who are in debt – the more we have diverse workforces, the more we have women in work, the more that economic burden is taken away. So, yes, it is a benefit for women but it is also a benefit for men. It’s a benefit for the company. The numbers back up the importance of diversity.

“In our own team, we have a very good gender balance, and we are lucky that this has grown very organically.”

GC: What challenges do you feel the legal industry has in tackling these issues? What does P&G do to tackle gender imbalance?

In the legal profession, we are still way behind. Most law firms, while they may have close to 50/50 representation when it comes to total attorneys, when you get to partner level, it dips substantially. And that’s where we need to call ourselves to attention on it: what are we doing and why? Why are women not achieving partner level in Latin America? That said, it is not just a challenge in Latin America. It is a global challenge.

In our own team, we have a very good gender balance, and we are lucky that this has grown very organically. There haven’t been any team changes in several years. Our chief legal officer is a woman. We had a global meeting in Cincinnati, and these are some of the things we discussed. To me it’s really important how she role models and the things she does. Before Vanessa, the role was filled by a man. The decision wasn’t a conscious ‘oh, it was a man before, now it must be a woman’. It was ‘who is the best person for this role?’ and that person was Vanessa. But I don’t think we will see those big issues here at the company – there might be individual biases – but the company pushes enough what its intent is on the social issues and even more now where the consumer is changing. Consumers, like millennials and Generation Z, want the company to stand for something, not just how much money it can make the shareholders. They want to know what your social issues are, and we have been able to do that through our advertising campaigns.

Our consumer base is predominantly women, and so we really need to practice what we preach. And I think we have three specific campaigns I like to speak about: #LikeAGirl, Share the Load, and We Believe: The Best a Man Can Be. Share the Load started in India and it’s about how, in a very patriarchal way, we assign jobs at the house for women and you go to work and do a full day’s work and then you come home and you have a full day’s work ahead of you again with household chores. And it’s fascinating to see what parents see in how they are raising their kids, or how dads are raising their daughters and how they wished they would have role-modelled differently. And then in 2019 we had our Gillette campaign, where we got clobbered on social media, because apparently there’s nothing more fragile than the male ego. And I don’t get it. I guess the other two campaigns were very inspiring and this was very ‘in your face’, deliberately. But it delivers a message and in the end the numbers backed up that we were right. It was the right call to go that way.

GC: From the legal industry perspective, when you’re thinking about panel law firms and who you give work to, do you look at diversity statistics? Does it influence your decision?

The law firms that I specifically use right now were in place before I started at P&G. Unfortunately, that’s not something I can say we reviewed or I reviewed at the time. But at least one of the firms has a very diverse and very close to 50/50 representation in partners. The other one does not. It’s a very much more traditional Costa Rican set up. But now that I’m more into the importance of this, in everything I try to look at where it is: what does the firm stand for, what does the company stand for, and I look at it in other firms here in Costa Rica. I like to look at whether firms are ranking for diversity.

I think we’re on the right track; we’re starting to talk more about the importance of diversity. It’s a long-term commitment to change, and sometimes you have to start small. It’s like in your personal life, you can’t just say, from now on I’m going to wake up at 5am every day and run 10km, and get to the office early, and eat vegan, and at night volunteer with charities. Choose one initiative, internalise it, commit to it, and then move on to others when you’re ready. Companies can’t go from zero to 100 in a few seconds – it has to be gradual and we have to work on it, work on the culture. Leaders have to role model and show that what they are saying is definitely what the company stands for. Eventually we will reach our goal.

María Gabriela Alvarez de la Fuente

I began my career as a legal assistant at court while I was still studying law at Buenos Aires University. After graduating law school, I spent three years in private practice before moving to BASF Argentina S.A. as an in-house corporate lawyer. In 2003, I had seen a job advertised at BASF and I found it really interesting. While I had really enjoyed my experience working in private practice, I wanted to feel part of a company. I applied for the role, and thankfully was successful! The switch from private practice to an in-house role was not a difficult one for me, and I found that I really enjoyed working with people from across the different departments, getting to know what the business was about, and contributing to its success. Since then, my experience has been solely as an in-house lawyer. I spent 12 years at BASF, during which time I received several promotions, and then followed that with a shorter stint at adidas as their director of legal and compliance (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay). I then joined Colgate-Palmolive in May 2016 as its regional legal director, Southern Cone. Colgate-Palmolive, the US worldwide consumer products company, focuses on the production and distribution of household, healthcare, and personal care products and operates in Argentina through its subsidiary Colgate-Palmolive Argentina.

In my current role, I have simplified several processes within the legal department, and have also worked hard to bring the legal team closer to the rest of the company – and the rest of the company closer to the legal team. I encourage colleagues from other departments to feel free to contact our legal team early, believing they will receive good advice from us, not just as lawyers, but as business partners. I believe that my attitude of openness and transparency has definitely proved successful. In the past three years, I have built up a rich portfolio by supporting projects that involved the launch of new products and technologies, facing challenges from competitors regarding product claims, as well as handling various business restructuring and litigation cases that are still ongoing. At the heart of everything I do, I aim to show that lawyers are not just a cost centre, but are creating value for the businesses in which they operate. I lead my team by example, and concentrate on providing commercially astute and solution-focused advice that enables the business to be successful in the marketplace while also protecting its business model.

While I have managed to build a strong reputation at Colgate-Palmolive for being committed to my vision, I believe I am also known for having a strong focus on people and being passionate about developing a diverse legal team to deliver results.

At Colgate-Palmolive, we are a small team of three people – all women. However, I have always managed very diverse teams during my career in private practice, and in-house at BASF and adidas. Diversity for me, though, is not only about gender; it is about embracing all the different ways of thinking. When I worked for BASF and adidas, I had teams that were very diverse: different ages, sexes, social backgrounds, and points of view. The more diverse a team is, the more creative it can be.

“Diversity for me is not only about gender; it is about embracing all the different ways of thinking.”

As well as being responsible for building my own diverse legal teams, I also promote gender equality across the business. I feel as a leader I have the responsibility to promote diversity. Within Colgate-Palmolive, I am the internal sponsor of the Colgate Women Network in Southern Cone territories, which is the region under my scope (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay). The Colgate Women Network is a global initiative that fosters an inclusive and diverse environment, and different activities are carried on in every country around the world. But the initiative has local implementation too. In Southern Cone, we organise activities and lectures and try to develop policies in order to help women grow in their careers with Colgate. For example, we organise inspiring breakfasts with women leaders in the region. These are often in an interview format, so that attendees can get to understand their experiences, the obstacles those women had to deal with while they forged their careers, and how they have managed their work-life-family balance. In 2019, we organised lectures on topics such as leadership, personal branding, and personal finance.

I am also committed to promoting gender equality outside my work environment, and I am currently involved with organisations such as IDEA to help promote diversity and inclusion in law firms and companies. While there is certainly a long way to go before there is gender equality in the legal industry, it is not the only industry in which it is more difficult to be listened to and to get ahead if you are a woman. I used to have that feeling – of not being listened to – especially when I was younger. But, the world has changed a lot… and it is still changing. Fortunately, in my current job, I don’t experience this anymore, and I’ve certainly been able to move ahead with my career. What I have observed, though, is that in private practice, the pace of change is much slower: the number of female partners is still much smaller than the number of male partners.

Quotas, of course, could go a long way towards solving the gender imbalance in the legal industry, but I do have mixed thoughts about them. In some cases, I believe quotas could be a good way to help those women who could not have got to a certain place without that kind of help; and I believe they can be helpful, especially in industries in which there is still a lot of work to be done with gender equality. However, using quotas to simply make up the numbers won’t work – for true equity and equality to take hold, there has to be a cultural shift and a change of mindset about women’s place in the workforce.