About

In terms of project work, Sari Kanaan says that recently his efforts as senior legal counsel for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey for AkzoNobel have mainly been concerned with M&A work. ‘Over the last six years’, he says, ‘I have led and completed transactions in Qatar, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya and Uganda, resulting in expanding AkzoNobel’s presence and footprint in addition to a possible transaction in other Sub-Saharan African countries’. He has also had a marked effect on the internal capabilities of the company’s legal function in the region: ‘As a trusted partner, legal has become an integral part of the business, and many of the initiatives taken on by our team have been rolled out globally, such as the use of templates for daily use high traffic, low-value work so that legal can focus on the high-value matters’. In the future, Kanaan envisions the future in-house counsel to be a highly technologically adept individual. ‘I think the entire legal sector, including in-house, is evolving’, he explains. ‘Technology will take over much of the admin and paralegal work, and businesses will become more independent in certain areas which may, in the short run, increase the exposure and risks. In-house lawyers will be required to accept a certain level of risk-mitigating exposures when coming up with contingency plans, and external counsel will be expected to complement and build on the in-house function’. Kanaan mentions his top three achievements with AkzoNobel as ‘being a founding member of the company’s presence in the Middle East and Africa, designing and producing compliance strategies for entering new markets in certain sensitive countries and being responsible for joint venture relationships, management and strategies’.