What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

I head the Airbus legal and compliance – Malaysia unit, and manage legal and compliance matters strategically across Airbus’ commercial, helicopters and defence and space divisions.

Throughout the pandemic we remained on the forefront with our business teams to support our customers’ operations in the commercial, civilian and military spheres. The second half of 2022 was especially meaningful as this marked the resurgence of aviation in earnest across the world and we worked with our business to return numerous commercial aircraft and helicopters to service, and prepare others for entry into service.

In spite of the pandemic, we continued to spearhead Airbus initiatives on anti-bribery and corruption topics through to 2023 – working seamlessly with all levels of stakeholders in Malaysia on plans, strategies and compliance-related risk management in anticipation of the re-opening of borders and revival of activities with customers, business partners and regulators.

More recently, we supported Airbus in marking a new chapter in the Malaysian helicopters market with the introduction of a new aircraft type in the country – the H175 which successfully entered service in May 2023 in the oil and gas sector, and also helped see through the renewal of Airbus Helicopters Malaysia’s support for the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s H225M military helicopter operations.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Malaysia over the next five-to-ten years?

The general counsel in Malaysia are nowadays often tasked with multijurisdictional responsibility – overseeing businesses and operations namely in Brunei, Thailand, Indochina, and Indonesia. In many cases they already hold group or APAC leadership responsibilities. We are also seeing more organisations relocate shared services hubs to Malaysia. The pandemic accelerated the shift away from the rigidity of single-location physical offices for regional positions – regional leaders work from anywhere within the same or similar time zone. This takes away the need for general counsel to be located in Asia’s traditional regional headquarters: Singapore or Hong Kong, for example.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

The legal services that we receive and the standards that our appointed firms hold themselves to help shape deliverables to our customers, our employees and our organisation. We, therefore, hold in high regard the ability to understand our priorities as an organisation, our position in the market, our direction and global strategy. Our firms need to be in step with us and maintain active, consistent exchange towards achieving this synergy.

As a service provider ourselves, we uphold a number of values, namely: integrity, customer focus, reliability, and respect. We expect that our suppliers and partners also prioritise these aspects. This may be elementary, but in a competitive legal market our partners must be uncompromising on integrity and quality, emphasise client care, and ensure that we receive consistent, reliable and timely advice.