About

Current head of legal at Shell, Murat Vanlıoğlu, has had an enviable career to date. He started his in-house career in the banking sector, joining Ernst & Young as a senior legal manager in 2002. Following this, Vanlıoğlu was head of legal at Toyota for two years before being approached by a head-hunter in 2006 to fill his current position. Since then he has brought three primary changes to the organisation: he assigned lawyers to specific business units for provision of legal services, delegated the authority to make their own decisions and upgraded the role of the general counsel from pure advisor to a business partner. This served to promote the personal development of the team and enabled proper succession planning for the future. He also has an impressive record of successful agreements, including the drafting of an M&A agreement that enabled his client to gain an extra 50 million USD on top of their expectations, through superior legal wording alone.