About

Led by Nicola Fell, the Asia legal team handling the affairs of global pharmaceutical giant GSK provide legal support to the company’s operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. Comprised of 32 lawyers and 12 non-lawyers, team members support all three GSK businesses (Consumer Healthcare, Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals) in their designated country as well as manufacturing and R&D operations if present in that country. According to Fell, ‘this has reduced duplication of work, and has resulted in a more aligned and effective way of working appreciated by the business clients. It has also encouraged the legal team to prioritise their workload, optimising the in-house legal support and actively contributing to business performance’. Following an organisational restructure in 2017 and in order to align to the new simplified leadership and functional structure of the global Pharmaceuticals business, the legal department is, at the time of writing, also going through an organisational change to align with the company restructure. ‘Despite all the changes, the team stays connected with each other through monthly meetings via teleconference calls; and annual face-to-face conferences with the broader legal organisation. The legal team also speaks the same language of being “Business Partner Guardian” to the business units we support, meaning we are active business partners yet we help guard the business against legal and reputational risks’, says Fell. The team can rely on its lawyers to transition into the latest developments as it has been actively managing its talent pool to ensure key talents within the department develop and take on regional or global projects or roles. ‘In the past two-to-three years, we have supported about four or five international secondments and moved team members from an in-country role to head up a regional team’, explains Fell. Legal affairs and compliance director, Mailyn Matamis-Ocampo has been highlighted by nominators as a key member of the team for her ‘expertise in the pharmaceutical industry, and her more-than-a-decade of experience in multiple leadership roles in the Philippines and abroad [that] have significantly contributed to GSK Philippines’ position in today’s ever-increasingly competitive and complex market’. Another key figure highlighted by the research was assistant general counsel, Chong Jin for ‘playing a crucial role in GSK’s Global Contracting Initiative (CGI)’ which supports routine and standard contracting work for all countries and helps to reduce the workload of the in-country legal teams. With such talents at hand, GSK’s Asian legal team has so far been able to support the GSK businesses on a number of significant developments and this looks set to continue after they transition to the new organisational structure. Recent achievements of the team include handling major product liability litigations, supporting a S$1.2m three-year study in Singapore which aims to create a database for research into respiratory diseases, the Implementation of an aligned approach across all markets with regard to GSK’s tender business and multiple e-commerce and digital initiatives, such as supporting new platforms, data privacy and competition law implications in the digital space. In addition to the organisational restructure, the team are also currently working on completing the integration of Novartis’ and GSK’s consumer healthcare and vaccines businesses.