About

Having completed her first ever year as an in-house counsel, following a successful career of seven years in law firms, Türkmen Holding’s first in-house counsel Nihan Seda Kişi has set the establishment of a central legal department as her priority. She has worked hard to develop an understanding of legal work to the business and has established a system where all transactions are first sent for legal review before implementation; a key development considering there was no in-house team before. Kisi was part of the team advising Türkmen Group during the acquisition of its sourcing division by ASDA (Walmart) which enabled the group to improve its speed moving into new markets. Being experienced as both an in-house and outside lawyer she believes that external counsel should focus less on theoretical details and put more effort into understanding the real needs of the businesses that they service, as that would allow them to provide result-oriented solutions. ‘I have worked as an outside counsel for over seven years where I gained lots of valuable experiences, however working as an in-house counsel has given me an understanding of a real sector and made me see different aspects of the activity areas of our group of companies. Since the activity areas of our group members vary from textile to yachting sector (even to aviation), I am required to follow up a wide range of laws and regulations which enables me to be aware of and confident with regards to the developments all over the country’ she comments.