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

Our team has been involved in a variety of work over the past year. With the strong recovery in the travel market, we shifted from a Covid-related work portfolio (balance sheet management, asset sales, lease re-negotiations, reduction in corporate overheads) back to growth mode. This has entailed pursuing new acquisitions and hotel management agreements, as well as continuing to work through dispute and contentious matters that have arisen in the past years. But in short, it’s been a return to growth and business expansion-related work—while locking in the operational efficiencies that we captured during the Covid period.

What are some of your tips for dealing with an in-house legal crisis?

Communication is key. Much of the time, common sense and logical thinking, as well as experience from lessons learned in the past, will guide toward the proper solution, but it the team is not aligned – including the business teams and the legal team – the best-planned strategy or response will fail or at least fall short in terms of potential effectiveness.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

This is a critical point and a key factor that we take into account when deciding to select law firms to work with. We our external counsel to understand our working style, our risk appetite and most importantly our larger deal/transaction/matter strategy—and to incorporate this into the advice that they give to us.

What are some of the main trends impacting the industry sector you work in in Thailand?

I work in the travel sector, and we are still somewhat unexpectedly still dealing with a post-Covid travel surge. Leisure travel – and the majority of our business in Thailand is leisure – is highly correlated with consumer confidence, so the continued strength of demand will be tied to inflation, interest rates and overall economic growth, any material developments in the Russia-Ukraine war and any other external shocks to the system. But there clearly is a great appetite to travel and to make up for lost travel opportunities and the Thai travel sector should continue to benefit from this moving forward.