What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

We have a robust antitrust compliance program at Henkel. The program compiles of different pillars. As the legal team, we make sure that the day-to-day operation of the business follows antitrust laws. To ensure that, we work with different business units within our organisation to understand their commercial goals and create compliant ways of working for them.

We review all contracts that Henkel is party to, from an antitrust point of view, and make sure that not only the operation, but also the relevant contracts are in line with antitrust laws. As a preventive approach, we also provide regular trainings to all employees and ensure that they have awareness and a good understanding of antitrust laws.

As the legal team, we must keep our knowledge up to date in order to advise the business in the most accurate manner. We regularly join seminars and conferences on antitrust laws and share the information within our team. We also cooperate with a panel of law firms to obtain expert opinions when necessary.

Henkel has strong and successful brands. Protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights is very important to us. Unfortunately, Turkey is a geography where we frequently deal with counterfeit or copycat products that potentially damage our brands, customers and consumers.

As the legal team, we are involved in combating counterfeit and copycat products throughout the country. We do that through both criminal and civil actions. For counterfeit products, we organise dawn raids at counterfeit production facilities. We have more than 25 cases and seize thousands of products annually. For copycat products, we file civil actions to prevent the trademark or design infringement and to eventually de-register the infringing trademarks/designs from the registry. As the legal team, we collaborate both with our marketing teams and external law firms in these cases, with a view to develop the best strategy to prevent IP infringements.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

I recently made new fee arrangements with different law firms that we engage. The new arrangements enabled our legal team to have more predictable costs at the beginning of a matter; have a simpler budget approval process with the business units; and spend less time on the follow-up of legal cases.

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

I care about the empowerment of women in the workplace. I believe this ensures fairness, diversity and innovation in an organisation.