About

‘When I started at Koc, we were a team of only three lawyers and our scope of work was limited to purely legal; we were not involved in the business decision making process. My team is now composed of 14 people, and our scope of work is tremendously wide’. Kenan Yılmaz prides himself on contributing to the creation of a 14-strong legal team that excels in all areas of practice. He joined Koç Holding in 1989; in 2000 he was promoted to vice general counsel and six years later he assumed the role of general counsel. Praised for his business acumen, Yılmaz holds an executive MBA degree, and as a member of the business committee he tries to integrate the legal function into the business. ‘As a result, over the last 10 years, the involvement of the legal team is regarded as a “must have” and we are deemed way more vital to the process, compared to the 80s or 90s’ he comments. ‘Therefore I would say that my biggest challenge and achievement was to change the perception of the legal counsel within the group. I would go so far as to say that since we are the largest group in Turkey, that has had an impact even outside the group’.