About

Comprised of five lawyers and nine non-lawyers, the legal team of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels (HSH) remains an innovative function within Hong Kong’s in-house industry. Led by group director for corporate and legal Christobelle Liao, the team has not only advised on the sales of luxury residential apartments at The Peninsula London Residences and The Peninsula Yangon Residences in the last year but also excelled in regards to technology and the effects of its latest developments in the legal world. In addition to smoothly launching the group-wide GDPR compliance programme, the team is commended for facilitating HSH’s digital transformation across the business which includes various customer relationship management systems and internal data management systems. As Liao proudly states, ‘all members of our legal team have contributed to developing innovative business-wide solutions for the group. Unconventionally acting outside their capacity as legal advisors, individual members have been part of diverse task-force projects which introduced company-wide innovative solutions tailor-made to improve efficiency or modernise a 150-year-old establishment’. The team’s efforts in taking an active role in data management for the company as a whole, working with IT teams from the beginning of procurement processes to implement new customer facing software and systems has also been recognised at industry awards this year. Liao believes that cybersecurity and data privacy will remain a top risk and challenge for the team in the future with website accessibility and disability compliance at the top of the team’s action list this year. It is also rolling out anti-modern slavery training across the group and assisting in incorporating human rights framework into procurement processes. ‘We work very closely with all business stakeholders to anticipate their needs which may not be limited to legal and compliance matters’, says Liao. ‘We continue to work closely with legal innovators to see if legal technology can make our department more efficient and effective’, she adds. Away from legal and technology matters, the team is committed to hiring future legal talents focusing on millennials who will take up three quarters of the workforce by 2025. Last year the team conducted over 150 surveys with millennials across the group-wide operations and hosted two focus groups to identify common key attraction drivers for millennials. Initiatives like this should ensure the legal team’s proficiency for years to come.