Team size: Five

Key team members: Yi-Ying Seng, Jeanette Lim, Hannah Choo, Lau Yoke Mun, Adrian Tan

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

The Heineken APAC legal team oversees all legal and compliance matters for Heineken’s operations across the APAC region. This encompasses a wide range of areas including M&A, intellectual property, competition law, privacy, anti-greenwashing initiatives, business conduct compliance, and an increasing focus on digital and technology matters.

In 2022, we completed the acquisition of a majority stake in a brewery based in Taiwan. Additionally, we have been actively involved in notable M&A transactions, including those involving the Wellington Hospitality Group and Joylab in New Zealand. Furthermore, we also successfully supported the transition of our 30-year-old Japanese joint venture into a fully owned entity under the Heineken umbrella.

Our dream is “To shape the future of beer and beyond to win the hearts of consumers.” We are actively revitalising and renewing our core beer offerings while continuously pushing the boundaries of innovation to explore opportunities beyond traditional beer products. In this regard, the legal team is involved in establishing innovation and research and development (R&D) hubs throughout the APAC region.

Furthermore, we have provided significant support in the development and launch of Tiger Soju Infused Lager, one of our notable product launches this year within the APAC region.

To keep pace with accelerating trends, Heineken is boosting digitisation as it progresses towards becoming the best-connected brewer in the industry. Part of shaping the future includes the digitisation of our route-to-consumer strategies, aimed at creating additional value for our customers. The Heineken APAC legal team also supports the implementation and deployment of our eBusiness-to-business digital (eB2B) platforms within the APAC region, allowing us to harness the benefits of digital transformation in our operations.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

The team’s key focus, particularly after the pandemic, has been to create connections and enhance learning experiences with our colleagues, with the aim of strengthening the capabilities of Heineken APAC’s legal teams. We have regular calls with our stakeholders, where we look to learn, share knowledge, and hone our expertise, to deeply understand the operational and commercial needs of our stakeholders, and become better business partners.

Within the legal community, we have been regularly hosting roundtables, with the intention of fostering a comfortable space where counsels can share common issues and experiences, including the development of crucial soft skills such as stress management and effective stakeholder engagement. The initiatives have helped build strong relationships across all functions and have bought us closer as a team.

Furthermore, we actively participate in and support Heineken’s 2030 “Brew a Better World” ambition. We are members of the Sustainability and Responsibility Steerco and actively engage in negotiations with suppliers regarding various initiatives.

The Heineken APAC legal team is a vital component of a cross-functional business conduct compliance team which oversees compliance activities throughout the organisation. The team takes a proactive approach in assisting the various operating companies in their compliance efforts.

Does your team make use of interesting tech solutions to streamline its workload?

As is the case with many in-house legal teams, we are faced with the challenge of ‘doing more with less,’ and to this end we have employed various digital solutions to assist us. Currently, we are in the process of implementing Ironclad into our operations, a document automation tool used for standard contracts across the company. Additionally, in response to the covid pandemic, we have streamlined our approval and physical signature process by using DocuSign – it has been a great success. Furthermore, we are currently in the process of piloting PERSUIT across our entire business, it is an external counsel management platform aimed at helping us better scope and compare our Request for Proposals (RFPs).