Team size: Eight

Key team members: Yingtse Chen Ouw, Linda Hu, Michele Musgrave, Liu Hailing, Judith Tan, Marco Liew, Loh Suyi

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The legal team was recently involved in Accor’s recent signing of a landmark hotel portfolio deal with Japan Hotel Reit Advisors (JHRA). This is strategic project is transformative for Accor as it is set to double its current portfolio in Japan, adding an impressive 23 properties and over 6,000 rooms, while rebranding the existing Daiwa Resorts portfolio into Grand Mercure and Mercure hotels. Our team’s contribution to this transaction was instrumental, being key drivers in negotiating complex aspects of this transaction and demonstrating a high level of speed to execution.

Another recent transaction we supported was Accor’s signing of its first multiple-property framework deal with Asset World Corporation (AWC), Thailand’s leading integrated lifestyle real-estate group. Under the framework, Accor will manage more than 1,000 room keys developed by AWC, across multiple Accor-branded hotels in key tourism destinations throughout Thailand. This milestone will support Accor’s continued rapid expansion across Thailand, a highly strategic market for the company.

Our commercial colleagues see the legal department as an intrinsic and invaluable part of the business and as trusted business advisors; we consistently work with the business as a seamless and integrated team on high profile transactions across a broad spectrum of brands and countries, driving growth and creating lasting value for Accor and its stakeholders.

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos?

We are a highly effective and professional team that is dedicated to supporting the growth and ambitions of our company while safeguarding its interests. We understand that the business world operates at a fast pace; we consistently demonstrate speed to execution without compromising on meticulous attention to detail, delivering high quality work, and excellence. As trusted advisors, we are also keenly aware of the need for commercially viable solutions – we strive to balance legal rigor with practicality to protect and propel the business forward.

Collaboration is also at the heart of our ethos; we work closely together, both within our team and in partnership with the business. We have a culture of knowledge sharing, encouraging the exchange of best practices, toolkits, and precedents, which enhances our collective expertise.

Ultimately, our team’s ethos is built on a foundation of taking pride in our role as strategic partners, mutual support, collaboration, and a commitment to achieving excellence.

How does the in-house legal team contribute to the overall dispute resolution strategy of the organisation?

Our team is an integral part of our company’s dispute resolution strategy. We work collaboratively with the business to proactively manage risk, prevent disputes, and implement effective strategies for resolving conflicts when they do arise. We adopt a multifaceted approach, accounting for key aspects like early intervention and conflict prevention; training and education; and documentation and record keeping.

By getting involved early in disputes, we can identify potential issues before they escalate into full-blown disputes. This includes conducting risk assessments, advising on potential legal ramifications, and recommending proactive measures to prevent disputes from arising in the first place. We also consider, when appropriate, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation or how to facilitate commercial resolutions to amicably resolve disputes. This can lead to faster, more cost-effective, and less adversarial resolution of disputes.

We provide regular training, guidance, and toolkits to the business on various aspects including legal developments, compliance, contractual obligations, common issues and how to work through them, and dispute resolution best practices.

We emphasise the importance of maintaining thorough documentation of all communications and actions and have implemented a structured approach and database to capture this.