Team size: Four

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

PDPD compliance. Since April 2023, the legal team has worked with internal businesses, external stakeholders, and external legal consultant to deploy the PDPD program in compliance with Decree 13.

Solar rooftop. PepsiCo’s vision is to be the global leader in beverages and convenient foods, which led to the implementation of PepsiCo Positive (pep+). Pep+ is our strategic end-to-end transformation that puts sustainability and human capital at the centre of how we will create value and growth. By becoming better, ourselves, we can help build a stronger, more sustainable future for us all. We are delivering on our pep+ ambitions across three pillars (positive agriculture, positive value chain and positive choice) and each one of us can play an important role. As a part of the positive value chain, it was decided to build a rooftop solar power system in our Binh Duong manufacturing plant.

The PepsiCo Foods Binh Duong Manufacturing Plant was built in 2007. In 2022, the rooftop solar power system was installed, making the plant become the first plant in Indo China Foods BU to install its own solar energy generation unit with enough production to partially meet its power requirements, and also able to sell some extra solar power generate by unused during no-production time to EVN of Binh Duong province. We can also gain more $59,000 annually from using solar electricity. This did come with its various challenges and the entire team led by Vietnam legal lead worked tirelessly in around seven months to lead whole licensing and contracts works, and even going beyond their roles and wearing the cap of government affairs due to the position being vacant in ensuring that not only all contracts are in place but also all relevant licenses applications for installation and operations were filed with various government authorities in record breaking timelines.

The Larry D. Thompson fellowship – internship program (DE&I support). At PepsiCo, we are committed to fostering a diverse workforce and creating a collaborative, equitable and inclusive space where everyone, regardless of what we look like, where we come from or whom we love, has a voice. Only when we are open about our identity, our story, our highs, and our lows, can we deliver more smiles, and build a better, more positive workplace for our people and the world for our business partners and communities. Accordingly, PepsiCo is proud to honour its former general counsel Larry D. Thompson with a legal internship designed to promote diversity in the legal profession and advance PepsiCo’s commitment to support the development of professionals from diverse backgrounds. Throughout his career, Mr. Thompson has been a steadfast champion of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and a mentor to diverse attorneys. Through this internship, PepsiCo is committed to continuing Thompson’s legacy of advancing diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

While the program has been running successfully in the United States for a number of years, this is the first time in the history of the fellowship that it has been extended outside of the United States to whole Indochina foods business unit, including Vietnam. The program was launched for the first time in 2022 for the Vietnam market. It awarded a third or final year law student or a first-year law graduate with an opportunity to complete a paid six-month program with PepsiCo Foods Vietnam. The program gave the successful candidate exposure to different business functions from a legal perspective. The program included site visits, mentorship opportunities and weekly curriculum sessions presented by many of our in-house experts in order to give the intern a complete in-house legal experience, which means not just learning about legal matters, but learning the business too.