About

Before joining Fugro, the leading provider of geo-intelligence and asset integrity solutions for construction, infrastructure and natural resources, Annabelle Vos was a corporate litigation lawyer and M&A lawyer in private practice at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek for 10 years. At the beginning of 2016 she was asked by Fugro, one of her clients at the time, to join them as general counsel. This transition has been extremely instrumental as her growth as a legal professional as she explains, ‘Being in-house exposes you to a combination of legal operational, strategic and practical questions which need to be combined to come up with a workable legal solution. Balancing these different aspects has made me take a step back from the purely legal approach to a broader more practical and fitting palette of options’. Since taking on her role as general counsel, Vos took the responsibility of building and improving the decentralised legal function for a global company with operations in 80 countries and local presence into a streamlined global legal team with a unified practical approach. This was achieved while taking into account the challenges and practices related to local legislation, culture and disparate ways of working. As a consequence, the legal function has gone from being a decentralised organisation to a global legal team which provides relevant and practical support to the business globally. ‘The wider company has come to see legal as a valuable asset to operations and a trusted business partner’, says Vos. As a critical part of the management board decision-making, she provides legal input to contribute to better overall outcomes to position the company for challenges, as well as upturns in the oil and gas market.