Team size (optional): Seven including me: Ananya Loungprawat, Padcha Wachararak, Stephanie Tenazas, Alexander Loh, Ng Zhenrong and Ivy Lim.

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

Michelin Group’s acquisition of Tyroola (Australia): Besides working on the transaction, what was more interesting and significant was the integration and restructuring that followed which allowed the group to grow its e-retail footprint.

Michelin Group’s acquisition of Royal Lestari Utama (Indonesia): Although the transaction completed in 2022, the journey of integrating this forestry business continues. The most meaningful work here so far has been to bring a living wage to all levels of the operations, as well as a high standard of ethics and compliance to the organisation from the top down.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives you would like to highlight?

In-house counsel have a unique point of view of the company as we are exposed to partners across a broad spectrum of functions. This special position has allowed us to make valuable contributions to group corporate restructuring projects which support the M&A activity of the group. In addition, recent upgrades to IT infrastructure have opened up some opportunities to improve our corporate structure and ready the group for its long-term strategy.

Overall, we see the role of in-house counsel evolving from a “pull-mode” service provider to a partner of the business teams who rely on us for cross-function strategic thinking and planning. We have also become trainers to our partners for important law-related competencies like intellectual property or contract negotiation. These are the levers we use to move our activities “up the value chain”, to ensure that we continue to bring value in an environment where the capabilities of AI are improving every day.

How do you motivate and manage the other members of your legal team well?

Purpose – We started our team journey a few years ago and part of that journey was to understand our individual motivations, and how we bring them to work. It has been fulfilling to explore how each team member’s purpose fits into the wider picture of the team’s and group’s purpose. Creating the alignment requires hard discussions but the end result is very energising and helps to build a safe space within the team.

Opportunity – Within the group legal department, our team members’ involvement in global projects give them the opportunity to connect with our wider legal community and gives them visibility of the possibilities of career progression within the group. Besides that, the benefit of being in a lean team is that each member has the opportunity to be exposed to a wide range of projects and activities within and outside our region which can broaden our horizons.

Fun – We take fun very seriously in this team and we try to make it a point to meet in person all together at least once per year, and it is a chance for us to see each other in a different light, get to know each other better. Most of all, we bond through our love of good food.