I’ve been with GE just over 20 years. In that time, 14 have been in the UK and now over five have been in the Middle East.
I think the challenge of being able to operate here from a multinational corporation is with distance from headquarters; as soon you have distance from headquarters, it slows down the ability to react, while at the same time your commercial deals progress quicker. You want fully empowered, competent, experienced legal counsel being able to do some of your deals. The size of the deal, in this region, especially the type of infrastructure projects that we get involved with (which are in the health, power, aviation, and removal sectors) are large. They can run from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.
I think the role of the general counsel in this region is multi-faceted. You are having to tackle a lot of issues, and there is scarcity of resources. So when you have to build up a team that is competent and qualified, you are fighting for resources and I think the key thing is, it will be resources from the region. My experience has been that being able to have an Arabic speaker is important – someone that can understand the laws in these countries. Most of [the laws] are codified, but you need someone that can understand Arabic and deals with the customers, but also deals with the laws. Because you are contracting out of the local office and you’re working with the government, you’re contracting under the local laws.
There’s a requirement for steady hands – someone that has had the experience to be able to sift the business leadership – so the business leadership was constantly looking for that trusted adviser to drive strategy, be that commercial strategy adviser, fill that stewardship role of being able to protect the brand and reputation. You’re operating in a region which Transparency International will tell you is one of the most challenging – but, within that, the UAE obviously not. The UAE is far more mature in terms of ease of doing business and business conduct – it is very good. But you leave the UAE and it becomes very challenging. If you look at the likes of Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan – those are difficult jurisdictions to operate in.
In terms of the stewardship role, there’s a lot of challenging work that you’re undertaking when you’re dealing with large engineering deals, B2B-type arrangements and large consortium agreements. We’re always dealing with partners, and you’ve got to be very careful about who you select as a partner, because you know we all are subject to the extraterritorial reach of the Bribery Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
We know that obviously there is a legal side to this, but your brand can be impacted so badly by choosing the wrong kind of a partner to go into a major transaction with. It’s quite a role to try and do here in the Middle East. It’s work keeping your company and its resources safe. If you’re operating in some of these countries, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a safe environment for your employees, that you know your employees that are coming into that country, and you’ve considered all the measures that are required to protect them when they come in. n