About

RB’s vast product portfolio and exposure to Middle Eastern markets means its legal function possess the skills to spot and handle risks before they develop further. Regional legal and compliance counsel for the Middle East and Iran Varsha Gupta emphasises this point, believing that the overall key to succeeding in a market that can be challenging and fast-evolving is to always be ‘resilient and creative’. The creativity, she explains, means ‘embracing new ways of working without being constrained to doing things in a certain way’ to achieve company goals in a diverse and dynamic market while still keeping within the law. An example of this is the team’s work in Egypt during the 2016 “dollar crisis”. ‘Due to the lack of availability of US dollars in Egypt, the Egyptian Central Bank pegged the Egyptian pound to the US dollar. Therefore, Egyptian vendors were unable to source US dollars which was the agreed currency for making payments to RB. To resolve this issue, we had to review and change RB’s operating model at the time [for this] to have minimal impact on the business’. Another example of the RB legal function’s enterprise and commercial focus was its work to establish a go-to-market strategy in Iran following the lifting of sanctions under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This project saw the team outline a comprehensive series of steps to be taken by RB to directly bring its products to market in Iran’s bureaucratic jurisdiction.