About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

ENGIE GEM Turkey, founded in 2016, is focusing on trading, energy and risk management services. I joined the team in June 2017 and as the platform was relatively new and still at start-up phase, I have focused on legal set-up by drafting and adapting contract templates and creating a corporate governance structure. In the meantime, I have conducted negotiations for supply and trading of big volume contracts and negotiations for amicable settlement for a contractual dispute. In January 2019, I took over the compliance and regulatory affairs positions which are currently handled by risk department but for the first time I was assigned with this duty as an in-house lawyer.

What have been the major external trends that have impacted your team’s work over the past two years (market developments, changing regulatory environment, political events etc.)?

As the Turkish energy market is still emerging and not all regulations are in place – due to them being frequently changed – as lawyers, we need to be well prepared and closely follow up regulatory developments and take the required measures. On the other side, in line with local and global financial markets’ development, gas and power markets have been seriously impacted by the foreign exchange crisis in 2018, liquidity in the market has been significantly decreased and loss of arbitration cases filed by Turkish gas importers against Gazprom has directly affected the market players and the market itself which lead to contract revisions and conflicts. In the meantime, digitalisation and introduction of new tools and smart contracts open a new window into legal services.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

ENGIE GEM Turkey aims to increase its market share in terms of trading and energy management services and become an important market player in LNG trading business by using its advantage and know-how on hedging and financial deals. As being part of the management team, I am also involved in decision making processes. I will be contributing some quantitative targets, supporting in conclusion of new high volume supply contracts, set-up of an LNG business in contact with EMRA and related administrative authorities and companies including new legal structures for the hedging and financial deals. In a comprehensive way, as required, I will be making the processes easier by using all the tools and protecting my company’s interests in line with regulations and company policies.

Does the team use any “legal tech” products and do you find them a helpful management device?

Digitalisation is one of the key pillars of ENGIE. We regularly use digital tools, agile tools and legal tech products to ease the workload and mitigate the fault and data loss. As legal team, we use “Sharepoint” to have a structured archive and easy access everywhere; “Teams” for project management, scrums and internal reporting; “Snoop-e” a contract management tool developed by our colleagues to ease contract negotiations and signing process with e-signature; “Envision” to sign company correspondences with e-signature and have an archive; and “Kazancı” to check the latest regulations and precedents. We prefer to use these tools and interested in new tools to ease data access everywhere, more secure and enjoyable.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role in evolving in your region over the next few years?

Considering the energy market’s dynamics, legal roles should be in coherence with and close to business and mostly handled by in-house lawyers. I believe compliance and internal control are exciting duties that in-house lawyers can also handle along with risk or audit teams and regulatory affairs should be also linked to legal role. During the recent years, many legal counsels are getting roles in management boards and ENGIE is supporting this evolution by recently assigning Head of Legal and Regulation as an executive committee member in charge of legal, compliance, sustainability, stakeholders and strategy expertise centres and Turkey business platform which is quite impressive and inspiring.

FOCUS ON: The future of the legal function

The in-house legal function is becoming a profit and value driver and a strategic adviser to top management rather than a support function, thus, in-house lawyers are getting involved into the business which is much more exciting and allowing to have new roles and collaboration with other business functions for co-construction. As legal function is not a cost centre only, I believe that lawyers will be much more interested in innovation and digitalisation, by this way they will be more client centric and creative to make their job more efficient. I also believe that in-house legal function is becoming a great expertise centre especially in power and gas trading markets, so with this evolution, we proudly see experienced in-house lawyers having some other roles as well as compliance, regulatory affairs, internal control, risk, quality and even strategic management.

The challenges in this journey are supposed to be data and expertise management, information security and digitalisation (adapting the classical way into an innovative way, using smart contracts, legal tech etc.), agility, becoming a real business partner in the company and training junior lawyers in this mindset.

In current days, legal teams need to be transformed, digitalised and be more technologically practical and provide a combination of legal, business and digital capabilities to improve the efficiency in their work flows and expertise by automating more routine repetitive tasks and focusing on more value-added key tasks. Thus, I believe that we will see more legal teams playing a key role at the management table considering the balance between contributing the business and protecting the company with the use of legal tech tools.