About

Can you explain the structure of the legal team?

GE in India is a conglomerate with diverse businesses ranging encompassing steam power, gas power, renewable energy, healthcare and aviation, and employs more than 20,000 people. Each senior lawyer is aligned to a business, reporting directly to the business leader with strong functional reporting. The legal team is a key member of the region deal risk review and leads enterprise risk committees. We have a dedicated real estate experts across businesses and work closely with the corporate governance leads.

What are the team’s most significant achievements in the last two years?

In 2018, GE Oil and Gas won a sub-sea order from ONGC and many on-shore wind projects and in 2019, GE Aviation bagged the prestigious Indigo engine order for 280 aircraft, the largest ever order in the history of aviation. In the recent massive restructuring of GE, the legal team has executed over 10 divestitures and filed two complex demergers in the last 18 months along with site consolidations. Also hundreds of transactions across different business delivery models, including a number of big-ticket deals with large Indian conglomerates and public sector undertakings (PSUs) are supported fully in-house.

Can you describe some of the challenges the legal team faces by working for such a diverse company in the South Asia region? And how significant is collaboration within the team when overcoming these?

There has been an explosion of new laws in the last five years. The team has a robust sharing of knowledge and best experiences formally conducted through monthly training sessions and informally through WhatsApp. Boundaries are non-existent, thanks to bi-annual team meetings and ongoing connections through video conferences and web meetings for best practice sharing and engagement. Annually the team participates in cross–business projects like simplification of contracts across businesses, insolvency impact strategy across customers/suppliers, POSH and MSME compliance to avoid duplication and drive consistency of approach across the company. Our summer interns regularly work under individual lawyers on new laws and outcome-based projects to benefit the entire company. Our success as a team has been the concept of “One Team” despite lawyers serving and being employed by various GE entities, including JVs. Everyone goes above and beyond to drive efficiencies and share best practices across the verticals. This unique exposure to varied industries and opportunities makes for a long and fulfilling career.

Has India’s recent investment drive in infrastructure impacted the company and the work of the legal team?

GE operates in all the major infrastructure sectors of significant focus for the current government and across manufacturing, R&D, sales and service. The speed and complexity has increased significantly. GE also has joint ventures with BHEL and NTPC, large PSUs.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

Culture Building: The team works with business leaders to ensure GE’s highest standards of ethics and governance for its 35 plus legal entities in India. The lawyers do not constrain their expertise to the law and partner to establish a best in class compliance programme not just for regulatory compliance but also to maintain “a culture of unyielding integrity” – everywhere, everyone and every day. External engagement and thought leadership: The team has reached out through seminars on “Fostering an Ethical Business Environment”, “Women in Power” and more, bringing together customers, government organisations, law firms and associations. GE has been an active member of the CII National Committee on Transparency and Integrity in Governance launching India’s first ever compliance management programme in partnership with CII and Indian School of Business. We are also a founding member of Ethisphere Institute’s Business Ethical Leadership Alliance (BELA) South Asia Chapter. Diversity: 64 % of our lawyers are women and have become proud parents while working with us. We established the GE India Legal Diversity Forum with a view to enabling and encouraging their personal and professional development. The team leads the company programme on Prevention of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace and the LGBT Alliance. Pro Bono: The team has partnered with IDIA and helped underprivileged law scholars. Annually we lead a community service programme in government schools around our offices (in 2018, three volunteers in Chennai and 26 volunteers in Gurgaon) to educate children on law as a career option, sexual harassment, integrity and ethics. General counsel, Tejal Patil is also an active member of the company’s CSR Committee. Focus on…