About

Chief Legal Counsel Duygu Kırca leads the Turkish legal department of US-headquartered multinational confectionery, food, and beverage company, Mondelēz International. To allow lawyers at Mondelēz to serve business units better the team has evolved into a “Legal, Integrity and Security” (LIS) department. This expanded remit has helped develop assurance, collaboration and best practice into key features of legal team and the wider company. Centre of excellences, covering M&A, IP and corporate work, have also been established to allow the development of significant expertise within the company. Using this knowledge, the LIS department has been at the forefront of Mondelēz’s diverse operations and corporate change; for example, leading the transfer of the Patos, Cipso, and Çerezos trademarks to Doğuş, one of the top three largest private-sector conglomerates in Turkey. They also led the spin-off Mondelēz’s coffee business, Jacobs, subsequently becoming one of the first companies in Turkey to structure, sell and lease back company assets. During this divestiture Kırca explains ‘all data room process were followed, legal documents prepared, a new company was established, new route-to-market was determined, new sales system was established and closing was completed by legal’. Other significant work undertaken and completed by the LIS team includes revising the company’s distributor structure, introducing a flexible side-benefits system for employees and training colleagues on topics from intellectual property advertising and dealing honestly with the government. Another particular achievement of the team was facilitating Mondelēz to be the first publicly traded company in Turkey to distribute profit arising from the correction of inflation difference. Recently, the proactive, business-orientated and risk aware team initiated a “No to Copycat & Counterfeit” campaign. Explaining the campaign, Kırca explains ‘we have prepared posters for headquarters and regional offices, increased awareness by comparison of original and copycat products, provided regular training on the same and we have challenged almost 30 copycats in the past two years. This has adding significant value to Mondelēz trademarks’.