About

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

As legal team, together with my colleague İpek İbrahimagaoglu, the most important transaction was the Project Future. Our main shareholder has been changed from Daimler AG to Daimler Mobility AG. The project was too complicated and difficult including requiring alignment from different regulators in order to obtain their pre-approval for the share transfer.

Additionally, we conducted Data Protection Project in a really short period. To our belief, data protection compliance project has both legal, technical and organisational aspects to ensure and maintain full compliance in the long run. Thus we aligned with several departments and external counsel.

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

Trends in digitisation, demographics and technology are not just reshaping future consumer habits; they’re changing our entire world. The automotive industry, for example, is developing new business models in readiness for technological progress and a shift to sharing. As a pioneer in vehicle manufacturing, Daimler sees making thefuture of mobility safe and sustainable as both a motivating factor and an obligation. We have summarised our purpose in three simple words: We Move You. It is our understanding of a new era of mobility. Driverless, electric cars meet tomorrow’s mobility requirements. Today’s car sharing culture will be multiplied a hundred times.

With the expansion of the mobility services, there would be new business models that need to be designed. As the legal team, we will assist in all these mobility and digitisation projects. We’ve been reviewing the regulatory requirements, also covering risks and uncertainties with the support of our external counsel.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

As the in-house lawyers, we should get to know the business we are advising, study company products and services, market and customers, understand the challenges the company is facing. Close communication and regular refinement of goals, objectives and strategic considerations are the keys to a strong working relationship. Regular contact ensures that the strategy and course of action are being implemented in a time and cost-effective manner.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future? 

We use Confluence for our internal communication on legislative developments, meeting notes and training among other uses; it is an easy to reach platform by all our colleagues. We follow up our OKRs via 7geese on a quarterly basis.

We lobby for the digitisation of the Know Your Customer processes with the local authorities. I believe we will have many more applications to be utilised in legal team in the future.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice? 

Yes. As the financial institutions are highly regulated, any changes in law have huge impact on our strategies, business models and even daily operations.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them? 

First and foremost, it’s vital to be clear as to goals, expectations and priorities and make sure that external counsel understand your company culture. Second, good communication and the exchange of ideas in this regard would benefit the work relationship in the long run. Last but not least, it’s crucial to have regular performance feedback sessions.

These three will help you to save costs in terms of time and communication and can greatly enhance work efficiency.

FOCUS ON: The value added by in-house counsel

Companies face an ever-increasing complexity of law and regulation from multiple sources internationally as well as nationally. Technology fully changes the legal landscape. In order to manage the developments, in-house legal counsel should take full advantage of technology. Using of technology will not only make legal departments work more efficiently, but also make it more appropriate for business colleagues to cooperate with legal in an effective and quicker manner. Furthermore, both the automotive and the mobility industry are under unavoidable change. Digitisation creates a lot of opportunities but also challenges. There are numerous changes in the laws and regulations to comply with, as well as the risk of data breaches or other cyber security risks. The legal and compliance risks have increased both for the company management as well as the shareholders since the amount of penalties are too high; moreover the risk of data loss and loss of reputation in case of non-compliance. Thus, in the near future it will be even more important than today to have the legal and compliance function on board in the shorter time possible, for to evaluate risks beforehand and to support the company with the best practices in terms of how to avoid/ minimise the risks.

In order to perform in this role, in-house legal counsel also need to be commercially savvy. A successful in-house counsel must have the ability to see things from the business perspective, strategise and anticipate risks for the company, while handling the legal function.

The next important thing is to have an aptitude for the job which encompasses the skills. As an in-house counsel, it is essential to have strong communication skills. This is because your role will require you to connect with a variety of parties, from external stakeholders to the heads of different departments or colleagues from other functions.

NOMINATOR QUOTE

As a whole legal and compliance team, Mercedes-Benz Finansman Türk has been dedicated to serving its clients in accordance with the principles of structural dynamism, up-to-date information and specialisation, as well as being aware of the importance of converting the expertise and experience gained in practice areas to an institutional culture.