About

Leading a legal team of six other individuals, Meltem Azbazdar is both general counsel and company secretary of major spirits-producing company Mey İçki, which has been owned by Diageo since 2011. Azbazdar has had a huge impact on the progression of the legal team at Mey İçki since taking over in January 2014, and details some of these improvements: ‘The structure of the legal department has been re-organised to work in a way that a law firm operates. The work allocation is revised according to expertise of the lawyers in the department, and lawyers are appointed to one more business units, so that each business unit knows which lawyer to work with’. This more structured method of working has had a corresponding positive effect on internal reporting. ‘As the legal department performs like a law firm’, Azbazdar explains, ‘we keep a log of the legal work and communicate this in numbers, whilst reporting to senior management’. This allows areas that potentially require improvements to be identified, and a steady increase in efficiency has been achieved by the legal function. This restructuring, combined with the fact that Azbazdar is a member of the executive committee of the company and all members of the legal team have contact with the committee and CEO, means that coordination between the legal function and the decision-making elements of the business is very high. Azbazdar and her expert marshalling of the team during the course of her employment with Mey İçki can take a huge share of the credit for this achievement.