About

Gim Boon Tan’s first in-house role was with Telecom Malaysia International, where he served as head of legal until Axiata was demerged and spun off into a separate listed company in 2008. It was during the course of this process that Gim Boon Tan developed his reputation as a skilful transactional lawyer, capable of managing a complex deal spanning 10 countries and multiple shareholders. Following his appointment as the group general counsel of the newly reformed company, Gim Boon Tan gained recognition for training a highly skilled team of professionals, many of whom have gone on to work as GCs in leading companies in the region. Gim Boon Tan has also impressed with his achievement to strategically alter the culture of his department, ensuring that lawyers emphasise the commercial aspects of deals. ‘We are no longer just a procedural or rule ticking department that other parts of the company must comply with to get contracts signed, but instead we are perceived as business partners’, Gim Boon Tan says. More recently, Gim Boon Tan has put significant efforts into making his department more adaptable to increasing regulation by promoting new technology. ‘Most regulations have not yet caught up with the digitalisation that is taking place in the external environment from customer behaviour through to non-traditional competitors’, Gim Boon Tan points out. ‘To deal with such an environment internally it is important for the way the department works [and] technological change and anticipated new regulations. Team members within the legal department, and also in the other departments that use legal services, are also educated on the impact of such changes to [their activities]’. Before moving in-house 12 years ago, Gim Boon Tan worked as a private practice lawyer in Malaysia and Australia.