Team size: Six
Key team members: Tan Su Hui, general counsel, Stephanie Tenazas, Ananya Loungprawat, Padcha Wachararak, Ng Zhenrong, Alexander Loh

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

The Michelin E2A legal team has played a significant role in several group acquisitions and the integration of these recently acquired businesses within the region, primarily focusing on Indonesia and Australia.

Notably, the recent acquisition of a 51% stake in PT Royal Lestari Utama posed a challenge for the legal team in adapting group legal processes and standards to an environment vastly different from the rest of the organisation.

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos?

Our lawyers work very closely with business partners and are heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. To cope with the increase in business activity, and the growing demands for legal and regulatory expertise, our legal team has placed significant focus on empowering and training our business partners regarding legal risks. The primary challenge we face is to delineate efficiently the boundaries between the legal department’s scope and those of other departments and decision-makers.

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

The legal department is driving the implementation of compliance and ethics programmes within the region, notably in areas such as anti-corruption, antitrust, privacy, and anti-harassment. Additionally, the team maintains and supports the region’s ethics correspondent network, which oversees the operational aspects of compliance implementation. The key challenge is to raise the profile of these compliance topics to the appropriate level of significance.

Spanning across ten countries, we operate in a highly diverse region in terms of differences in language, cultures, and levels of regulatory sophistication. Consequently, our legal team frequently relies on its impact and influence amongst business partners to bridge these compliance rollout gaps effectively.