About

A major Turkish automotive company, Tofaş was founded in 1968 and is held in equal shares by Koç Holding and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), and is one of the two research and development centres of FCA in Europe. Being the fifth largest industrial enterprise in Turkey, Tofaş has an annual manufacturing capacity of 400,000 vehicles with around 10,000 employees. Its in-house legal team comprised of four corporate lawyers, three litigation lawyers and a paralegal handling all consumer and corporate related legal matters with specific expertise in compliance, anti-trust, personal data, corporate governance, and supply, dealer and third party contracts as well as consumer related litigation management. In the last two years the legal function has worked to increase its role within the business and become a pre-emptive tool instead of firefighting problems. The Tofaş legal department is being recognised for its central role in the expansion of the company, ongoing since 2014, and in particular transforming the company’s systems and culture relating to compliance, in line with the latest GDPR, anti-trust, consumer law and other requirements. Hakan Bekiroğlu, the chief legal officer, highlights the team’s risk prevention attitude saying, ‘what is success? Winning a €50m lawsuit vs [a] company, or being able to prevent this lawsuit in the first place?’