About

Simhan Savaşçın Başaran is the chief legal counsel of Eczacıbaşı Group, a prominent industrial group that contains 41 companies. She joined the group seven years ago and has since expanded the legal department to better respond to the needs of the group companies. ‘Now, we can support the group companies more efficiently and implement and follow-up compliance programs. We are raising the awareness within the group of the changes in the legislation in a timely manner with our circular letters’ she says. Savaşçın Başaran is mainly involved in mergers and acquisitions and she can remember many career-defining successes: for example, the acquisition of the shares of a joint venture partner in one of the group companies. ‘The deal had to be closed in a very short and limited time, so there was an extra time pressure to add to the complexity. We needed to receive competition clearance in Turkey and in one of the CIS countries. With very good coordination with our outside counsel we closed the deal on time’. She enjoys working closely with the management structure and seeing the importance of her legal advice in practice. Savaşçın Başaran has participated as a panel speaker in conferences on international arbitration, displaying market-leading legal knowledge.