About

David Dobbyn, senior director and regional counsel of EMEA and India, is the individual responsible for the company’s team in Ireland, consisting of himself and Lorraine Cannon-Lalor, legal counsel EMEA. The team was centrally involved in devising and driving the global organization’s implementation plan for the GDPR over the last year in anticipation of the May 2018 deadline: ‘This was very challenging but we successfully managed intensive cross-functional collaboration on the GDPR plan across multiple regions. EMEA is an important market for the organization and we have closely supported a number of high-value commercial initiatives with top tier customers, in particular.’ The team has also had to advise on complex EU regulation and worked with business partners to find the appropriate balance in corporate policies between the rules under different regional legal systems. Xilinx has very ambitious strategies to grow its business with highly innovative technologies in fast moving market segments. Dobbyn says that this ‘creates a very exciting and dynamic work environment for its lawyers too. The challenge is to remain agile so that the team can continue to anticipate and provide the best business-focused legal solutions available for what are often unprecedented legal situations. This means making sure that we understand the key elements of the company’s strategy as well as its evolving business models and products’. Recent changes to Irish and EMEA regulation have also increased the team’s workload particularly in the areas of corporate compliance and data protection.