About

Faris Alsagoff manages 175 people across luxury resort and casino Marina Bay Sands’ legal and surveillance functions. Delphi Automative’s former Asia Pacific general counsel joined in 2010 when the centre was still under construction, and proceeded to build the now 17-strong legal department from scratch. ‘I have led and managed regional legal teams in three multinational companies and in all that time I have only ever lost one lawyer from my team to other career opportunities’, says Alsagoff. ‘In today’s competitive environment, I think that is not a bad statistic.’ Building the legal function entailed not only a considered recruitment program, but also intensive training and mentoring, to ensure it fully met Marina Bay Sand’s complex business needs. The challenge of fulfilling the needs of one of the world’s largest casinos, in a country with particularly onerous gambling regulations, was heightened by the lack of gaming law specialists available in Singaporean firms. The sheer scale alone of the entertainment complex also meant considerable depth and breadth of expertise was required. The diversity of legal work this creates is, for Alsagoff, one of the major attractions of the role. ‘On a typical day, I could be meeting with government agencies to discuss regulatory issues in the morning; negotiating an entertainment contract or the purchase of a work of art in the afternoon; and strategizing with my litigation team on an ongoing High Court case in the evening’.