About

Cesur Kılınç has been the general counsel of Anadolu Group since 2000. Kılınç joined the company, one of Turkey’s leading conglomerates, as legal director in 1994. Prior to that, he worked as consultant in law for ENKA, and Çoflar Müflavirlik A.fi. During his time at Anadolu he has brought significant changes. He revolutionised the legal department by implementing a more proactive and solution-driven approach and introduced English as the working language, which for an international company with branches in more than ten countries is a key reform. His vision was to create a legal department that would provide expeditious and protective legal solutions, be proactive, have a wide scope, act with common sense, work with expertise and knowledge, act professionally and be a solution partner of the stakeholders. ‘I would say that the biggest achievement of my in-house career to date is the establishment of the group’s legal department with the mentioned perspectives’. He takes credits for his crucial role in the group while it was moving towards becoming an international company, expanding geographically through numerous Joint Venture agreements. This spanned different international brands in a variety of territories, with the realisation of IPOs, merger of four publicly listed beer companies and restructuring of the group companies. ‘Taking effective solutions and business-oriented stance in all material transactions of the group in a wide range of investments in various territories, successfully closing all the deals and at the same time trying to establish the legal department having the above mentioned perspectives, was the biggest challenge I have faced’ he comments.