About

Toby Yiu joined Australian publicly listed media company Nine Entertainment in 2013 as corporate counsel, and has been working across a number of aspects of the Nine business, including content acquisition deals with international studios, managing its trade mark portfolio, and working closely with the general counsel on the 2018 merger with Fairfax. Yiu is highly praised among his peers, with one saying: ‘He is well liked and well respected by the business – who are very demanding for industry expertise, commerciality and responsiveness – and by his legal team peers. He seeks opportunities to extend himself by, for example, seeking and taking on board roles for joint venture bodies and industry associations. He is a great teacher of junior lawyers, [and] has the expertise and character attributes to be a future general counsel’. Another colleague states: ‘Yiu has oversight for programme acquisition contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars each year and his input has resulted in real wins for the business. For example, improvement in terms of trade and substantial financial savings. He “gets” the media, understands commercial relationships and drivers, and more broadly he always strives for the best outcome. Yiu is professional, exceptionally organised, always willing to help others and furthermore, he’s extremely approachable’. During his time at Nine, the business has evolved at great pace, from the introduction of new television channels and online streaming, to the launch of Nine’s own subscription video on-demand service called Stan, a competitor to Netflix in Australia. ‘My involvement with Stan is one of my favourite highlights. Stan launched ahead of Netflix in Australia and I was part of the team during the start-up phase, advising on branding and regulatory issues, negotiating technology platform agreements and content deals. It was incredibly exciting to work on a new product which has transformed the media landscape in Australia’, Yiu says. He is also the sole production lawyer for The Block, one of Nine’s biggest reality franchises. The legal aspects span multi-million-dollar property acquisition and disposal, construction, tax and all-important revenue activity such as content integration. According to Yiu, ‘businesses can cultivate rising stars by developing their commercial skills and acumen. This could be achieved in various ways, for example by allowing a lawyer to spend some time outside their usual sphere or interacting with senior leadership in a business and strategic (rather than strictly legal) context. Personally, I sought board roles which would provide the opportunity to take off my lawyer hat and flex different muscles such as finance and corporate strategy. Nine has supported this endeavour and I was appointed a non-executive director of Freeview Australia from September 2017 to February 2019. I was also recently appointed as a non-executive director to rsvp.com.au, Australia’s oldest online dating site’. In Yiu’s view, given its impact on legal practice, ‘general counsels of the future will, by necessity, need to embrace technology, in particular AI and data. With general counsels having to “make do with less”, AI and automation is likely to play a significant part in addressing that challenge which should free up resources and let lawyers apply their skills to high value work’, he explains.