About

From her base in Istanbul, Funda Zeynep Ekincioğlu leads both the legal and compliance functions at the Turkish operation of global healthcare leader MSD, and has a history of providing ‘sound judgment and reasoning along with excellent project management abilities (including management of resources, time, budgets and scope)’, according to a nominating source. Owing to the wide scope of MSD’s business in Turkey – which has existed since 1993 – Ekincioğlu is required to be flexible and provide advice in a speedy and accurate way. To assist with this, she implemented a number of efficiencies since joining MSD Turkey in 2016 such as process improvement and simplification within the legal department and streamlining the company’s complex court litigation cases. Elaborating on this, Ekincioğlu says, ‘We have analysed each and every court case that we have lost to understand the underlying reasons and as a result work with human resources and other lines of business for process improvements. To do that, I have converted the line of business and legal relationship into a strong partnership where legal has been involved in all potential legal matters early in the game with a proactive strategy in mind’. Other highlights of her time at MSD include completing a data privacy project in the market following the enactment of new personal data protection laws, managing the legal and strategic side of the public tender processes with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and completing a competition law assessment across all functions in the company. She has also led a number of compliance programs to further protect MSD Turkey from the wide of range of legal risks associated with a multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in the region. Before her current role, Ekincioğlu spent over three years at Pfizer as a legal counsel in Turkey. In that role – her first in the healthcare sector – she gained particular recognition for leading on a number of important company projects including the merger process of Pfizer and Ferrosan, direct procurement transactions with the MoH and a major demerger of Pfizer Turkey’s business. Before embarking on her professional legal career, Ekincioğlu graduated from the law faculty at Marmara University in 2008.