About

Founded in 2002, GAMA Energy develops and invests in power and water infrastructure projects in Turkey and the surrounding region. Aybars Yağız joined the company in 2012 as its first legal counsel and now heads a legal team of nine lawyers. During his five-year tenure at the company, Yağız has achieved a number of notable successes, whilst, in parallel, transforming the legal function. Over the last several years, for instance, he built up a compliance mechanism and set up the legal team to provide legal services internally in a variety of disciplines. He has also consistently encouraged his team to be active in its associations with various organisations in the sector, thus expanding its network of contacts in the Turkish in-house community. Yağız has been a key factor in a number of transactions for GAMA energy, including the exit of GE Energy Financial Services and the simultaneous entry of International Finance Corporation and Tenaga Nasional Berhad as shareholders of the company alongside GAMA Holding. Commenting on this important change, Yağız says, ‘it was a superb experience in terms of time management, diversity of transactions and work distribution given the size of the deals’. He also cites managing a ‘nine-digit USD arbitration’ which took four years to conclude as another major career highlight. ‘Every stage of the arbitration, especially the hearing enhanced my strategic thinking, and indeed, teamwork’, he says. Yağız has also been commended for successfully concluding five multimillion dollar company acquisitions during his time at GAMA energy. Keen to help the wider community, Yağız has started fund raising for children fighting leukaemia, funding all the needs of the children in a selected hospital. To add to his repertoire, he recently began an executive MBA course at Bilkent University which is expected to be completed in 2019.