About

Yu Lian de Bakker started her career in 1995 at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, one of the leading law firms in the Netherlands, predominantly focusing on corporate law, banking and finance and M&A, serving a three year tenure in the London offices. Shortly after her return from London, she decided to move on and landed an in-house role at Metro Group in 2004. In that role she was head of legal, supporting both the operational cash and carry business of Metro in Netherlands, but also dealing with a myriad of deals and corporate issues for the holding entity within the group, in close collaboration with the legal team in the Düsseldorf headquarters. ‘During my ten year tenure at Metro, my role developed and grew. Besides the usual legal aspects supporting the business, other legal areas like competition law, data protection and compliance were added to the focus areas of my team’, adds de Bakker. After serving in this role ten years, in 2014 she was given the opportunity to take on the role of vice president legal affairs and general counsel for renowned American fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger at PVH Europe, the company’s global headquarters. In this role de Bakker has developed a legal team to become a trusted and reliable partner of the business, ‘this year we achieved the number five position in a survey in which all 25 departments were rated. For the legal department this is an incredible result. Compared to where we stood when I joined PVH almost four years ago, back then at number 19, we have shown a big step up in terms of impact, trustworthiness and professionalism’, says de Bakker. Being an exceptional leader and manager is a critical part of de Bakker’s career development and she concedes that she inherited a team that was used to a, ‘management by fear-style’ and it took a while to create a feeling of safety in the team. ‘It has been a team effort, but my serving leadership style has contributed to our current state, now we have a vibe that is very special, almost feels like family, with a lot of trust, transparency, laughter, sharing and friendship’ she says. Since taking on the legal team she has introduced the concept of legal operations, adding a legal operations specialist to the team and identifying the legal operations roadmap for the coming years, focused on systems such as global contract lifecycle systems, e-billing workflow and standardisation in order to handle cases in the most efficient way, focusing on the ‘legal brain work’. De Bakker takes pride in vastly improving the communication between legal and the business and has changed the structure of the team, appointing dedicated legal directors for the sub teams working on IP, brand protection, corporate and commercial, employment and compliance and privacy. ‘In addition, I created more budget for trainings for the team’s members as I feel we need to keep investing in ourselves and in the legal expertise within the team. I like to see my team members grow, and I feel it is my duty to enable my team members to grow’, says de Bakker.