About

British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company Unilever has an extremely strong presence in Southeast Asia and its esteemed position in the region’s markets is reflected in the quality of its South East Asia Australasia (SEAA) legal team that is headed by general counsel Sarah Woodhouse. Comprised of 23 lawyers and eleven business integrity professionals and compliance experts, the SEAA legal team has four lawyers across Malaysia and Singapore, four lawyers in Thailand, three in the Philippines, Australia and Vietnam each and six lawyers in Indonesia. ‘The team is structured per market with a general counsel leading each respective SEAA market with the exception of Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos which, due to size, is under the responsibility of a senior general counsel, Saswata Mukherjee who also leads expertise in SEAA for M&A’, explains Woodhouse. She adds that ‘all general counsel are active members of country or multi-country leadership teams driving creative and proactive legal solutions. In addition, within the team there are rotated additional responsibilities of expertise where lawyers can grow their expertise as cluster champion for either competition law, e-commerce, privacy or litigation and be part of global expertise teams. These lawyers are then the “go-to” experts in the cluster for any queries in these areas and share their knowledge and learnings across the broader team’. Demonstrating the trust and confidence of the company in the legal function, in March 2015 the legal team was also given the additional responsibility of heading Unilever’s business integrity agenda and investigations in each country. Other notable recent achievements of the team include completing the transformation of Unilever’s Myanmar business with a joint venture for its home and personal case business with a local partner, the acquisitions of the Weis ice cream business in Australia and New Zealand and of Carver in Korea. It has been commended supporting the business in new business models and e-commerce arrangements such as a partnership with Lazada and for its role in the closure of Unilever Australia’s ice cream factory collective agreement restructuring which ‘made news headlines, but with the support of the legal team was able to find a good collaborative and engaging outcome’. Other key figures in the department include Roj Rungvisai (general counsel, Thailand), Dong Hoang Nam (general counsel, Vietnam), Sancoyo Antarikso (vice president – governance and corporate affairs, Indonesia), Cristina Reyes (general counsel, Philippines), Gwendolene Lee (category counsel, food and refreshment) and David Dwyer (general counsel, Australia and New Zealand).