About

Head of legal Nursema Ekinci (who is also a director at the company) leads a talented in-house legal team comprised of 20 lawyers and four support staff, with 13 lawyers located at the supermarket chain’s Istanbul headquarters and seven located in the Izmir and Ankara branches. The Migros legal team carries out core legal tasks, such as contracts, petitions, applications, articles of association, board decisions and more. It also manages any use of external counsel, used primarily for following up on and attending hearings or filing applications all around Turkey. There are four main sub-teams working on in-store problems and enforcement law, real estate law, corporate, IP and contract law and competition law. As a result of the structural commitments, Migros’ legal team successfully completed the divestiture of 25 TCA-selected Migros and Tesco Kipa stores. This was a major accomplishment given divestitures are not a common legal issue handled by the in-house legal teams without outside counsel support. After its acquisition of Tesco Kipa, where the Migros legal team played an important and integrated role on all legal issues, the company also took steps to acquire 72 stores of Makro Market-Uyum, a local retail market chain, in March 2018. The Migros legal team overviewed the legal risks expertly and provided opinions to minimise them as much as possible. The legal team carried out all of the legal matters, including, but not limited to, legal due diligence, contract negotiations, competition law filing, real estate and trade registry applications, and reforming lease agreements of the acquired stores without any outsourced law firm support in this deal. When asked about the team’s vision, Elif Açelya Balkı, corporate compliance manager and legal team member, identified that ‘the Migros legal team’s priority is being reliable and strategically accurate. Migros teams rely on [the] legal team’s opinions and guidance in their business decisions. Hard work and diligence are the keys to Migros legal team’s disciplined attitude’.