About

“CLP Holdings is one of the two main electric power generation companies in Hong Kong. Headed by
David Simmonds, group general counsel and chief administrative officer, CLP’s legal team consists of 15 lawyers and 11 support staff. Amongst the team, senior director of group legal affairs Corrine Katz was
singled out by one nominator who says she ‘leads a diverse regulatory and compliance team that is impressive in the scope and complexity of day-to-day issues faced by the company’s generation and transmission businesses’. The team has recently added one lawyer to provide focused support to the growing CLPe Solutions business and also brought on two secondees leveraging flexible resourcing arrangements to assist on areas with heavy workload. The past 12 months has been busy for CLP’s legal team, who have been working on various significant issues, including the development of an offshore LNG terminal in Hong Kong, projects for two additional gas-fired generation units at Black Point Power Station and the successful bid by CLP’s joint venture with TUS-Holdings to participate in the Fangchenggang high tech zone incremental distribution network pilot project. The team also assisted in bringing in CDPQ as a partner in CLP’s Indian business and setting up arrangements for the feed-in-tariff and renewable energy certificate schemes in Hong Kong. Furthermore, it is commended for working on acquisitions for renewable projects such as the Meizhou solar project in mainland China and agreements with start-ups and universities to speed up the development of smarter and cleaner energy services as well as CLP’s investment in technology companies such as Autogrid, an energy management software developer based in Silicon Valley. The team has also been dealing with constant changes in energy regulation in various markets in which they operate coupled with developments around privacy and data, among others. CLP aims to power the sustainable development of communities in which it operates by providing reliable and affordable electricity to customers with minimal impact to the environment. Its strategy to achieve this is to leverage new and emerging technologies to aid the progressive decarbonisation of portfolio, empower customers in making better energy choices and manage the increasingly complex power system. The legal team will provide strategic legal advice and counsel to assist across those activities relying on its excellent lawyers who are the fundamental cornerstone of CLP’s legal function. ‘We work hard to maintain a high level of talent. Our people are our greatest asset and we try to ensure they are working on strategically interesting matters. It is also important that they get to partner closely with the business to help everyone move towards a common goal and to not be seen as a standalone function giving advice from the side lines’, says Simmonds. ‘It’s a very exciting time to be an in-house lawyer in the energy industry’, he continues, ‘the industry is going through an exciting period of innovation and technological change and CLP is preparing to be a utility of the future. This means we get to work on a wide variety of matters from business-as-usual activities to power development projects and innovation initiatives being undertaken across the organisation’.”