About

Formerly at Munger, Tolles & Olson, Jay Ghiya had not always planned to move in-house when the opportunity arose to join $90bn global fund manager and former client Oaktree Capital Management. ‘It has an incredible culture,’ he says of the company, adding: ‘The breadth and variety of issues is a different world, compared to what I was facing in private practice. In private practice you’re focusing more on details rather than the big picture’. A tax specialist, Ghiya was highly regarded in the industry even before his move in-house. ‘Jay is a superlatively talented tax lawyer,’ says Peter Furci of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. ‘Due to the breadth of Oaktree’s activities Jay needs to have a daunting range of skills and knowledge’. His technical expertise were put to the test when the company went public in 2011. ‘It was a major accomplishment and there was a lot more than myself involved,’ he says. ‘Most public companies aren’t eligible – it’s a really novel structure and highly tax sensitive. To make sure it was architected and implemented in the right way, I had to work creatively from a tax perspective’. Ghiya has kept up his pro bono work at Oaktree, and his whole department has volunteered for housing charity Habitat for Humanity. A significant part of Ghiya’s role is co-ordinating all outside counsel; to do this effectively he developed a standard, centralized process. ‘We had to compare law firms across the globe – it’s difficult to do that in a vacuum’. Unsurprisingly, he has high expectations of law firms. ‘Getting from good to great is really going above and beyond the question that’s asked’.