Key team members: Jeth Lee (chief legal officer), Dafril Phua (principal corporate counsel)

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

The team is responsible for providing legal and regulatory advice for Microsoft’s commercial interests in Southeast Asia. Based in Singapore, which is Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific headquarters and the largest market for the company in the region, the team has been involved in a number of key transactions in the past year.

We concluded strategic and complex contracts for significant multi-year revenue deals with customers across Southeast Asia, including in the financial, telecommunications and energy sectors and in the public sector for each country.

We led Microsoft’s bid for data centre capacity in the Singapore government’s first tender exercise since a moratorium on new data centres was imposed in 2019, resulting in Microsoft being one of the successful awardees among a large pool of applicants.

The team provided legal advice across all of Microsoft’s fast-growing business lines, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform cloud platforms and products, and professional consulting services.

The team also provided advice on all existing and emerging regulations in the region. As a sample in recent times, this includes Singapore’s Cybersecurity Act and Online Criminal Harms Act, Bank Negara Malaysia’s Risk Management in Technology policy, Vietnam’s Personal Data Protection Decree, Thailand’s Royal Decree on Digital Platform Services and Indonesia’s Personal Data Protection Law.

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos?

The Microsoft team is on a mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. We drive towards achieving this every day through our work in the region, ensuring that technology is democratised through Microsoft’s vast network of partners and customers. The legal team plays a critical role in ensuring that this is done in an effective and compliant way.

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

The team is keenly involved in engaging on fit-for-purpose regulation in the various jurisdictions on important issues of the day. This includes engagement on ASEAN and national frameworks on the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and national initiatives to drive skilling in the tech sector and to bolster sustainability outcomes.