Spotlight on…

A qualified Vietnamese lawyer, Nguyen Thi Tu Trinh has over ten years of experience focusing on foreign investment, corporate, M&A, and dispute resolution. After working for a US law firm for eight years, Trinh now is senior legal manager at Sembcorp Energy Vietnam.

With a passion for renewable energy and sustainable development, for the past seven years, she has spent most of her time advising and providing legal support for many renewable energy projects (rooftop solar, ground mounted solar and wind energy projects both for greenfield development and M&A transactions of brownfield projects for more than 30 projects with total capacity of around 1000 MW) in various provinces in Vietnam.

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

We have spent most of our time advising and providing legal support on many renewable energy projects (rooftop solar, ground mounted solar and wind energy projects for greenfield development and work on many potential M&A transactions of brownfield projects with total capacity of around 1000 MW) in various provinces in Vietnam. All our legal works fully support our company’s strategic plan to drive energy transition.

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?

For M&A transactions, we created clear processes for the legal and other internal teams of the company (technical team, finance team, O&M team, project team) to follow and work together efficiently. We created many templates for requests for fee proposals, questionnaire, list of requested documents, procedures, and transaction documents for the legal team to use for potential M&A transactions and to save time and costs when working with external law firms.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Vietnam over the next five-ten years?

With deep knowledge of the business sectors of companies, the general counsel plays a key role in providing legal support to the business. With a strong in-house legal team, a company will not only save significant costs on legal service fees, but will also ensure sustained business operations, and daily risk mitigation for all business activities.

What are some of the main trends impacting your industry in Vietnam?

As lawyers working in the renewable energy sector in Vietnam, we face many challenges due to the unstable legal framework for this industry in Vietnam. However, it is also an opportunity for us to become more flexible when dealing with legal matters. As green energy is necessary for the world’s sustainable development in the long term, we strongly believe that our business will increasingly develop in the near future.