Team size: 12

What are the most significant cases and transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

My legal team and I were involved in high-profile mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions within the insurance industry where the deal had a substantial consideration. My role included overseeing due diligence, ensuring regulatory compliance, and navigating complex negotiations. This transaction had a crucial and significant impact on the acquiring company when it became the strategy shareholder of two insurance companies.

My team has also participated in negotiating, signing and managing the EPC contracts for wind and solar power projects with a capacity of up to 1GW. In the past year, the projects have completed construction and finalised the settlement of EPC contracts with contractors. This has given us extensive experience in putting renewable energy projects into action.

Additionally, I play a key role in a Build – Operation – Transfer (BOT) Contract involving a project of aviation port. This project required careful coordination between various stakeholders, including government authorities, investors and contractors. This project not only contributed to infrastructure development but also opened new avenues for regional connectivity and economic growth of the area.

Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?

The secret to working well with business partners may vary depending on their mottos, targets, and signatures. Mutual respect and trust, however, are the most crucial elements for working well with practically all of your business partners. While respect guarantees that each partner’s perspective is well taken into account, mutual trust facilitates smoother decision-making. As inherent as it sounds, when it comes to negotiating or cooperating, many problems may arise as parties have different objectives and ways of working. It may create some dilemmas or perplexed conflicts, making it hard to keep up your professionalism, respect, and mutual trust. Hence, you and your team must try your best and make efforts to create a trustworthy, transparent, and professional work environment to achieve a successful collaboration. Finally, it should be preferred to create a win-win solution that balances and satisfies all parties rather than setting up a trap with a zero-sum mind.

How do you motivate and manage the other members of your legal team well?

In a large holding company, motivating and managing the other members of the legal team effectively requires a balance of clear expectations, strong leadership and personal engagement. Clear expectations mean that all members of the legal team must acknowledge their roles, objectives as well as deadlines. It is quite complicated because a legal team in a large holding company does not have an annual or quarterly target as clearly as a business team. Strong leadership shall have to be the navigation to outline all the expectations towards the team with an effort to ensure that every member understands their tasks and then works effectively and harmoniously as a whole. It can be a more motivated working environment for the members to be understood by their leader, such as having personalised ways of working with different members. Leadership may be naturally possessed, built, or both. I trust that being born with leadership ability is a divine gift; nevertheless, I have grown more than ever not only in leadership skills but also in many other novel areas from all the working experiences over the last few years. It is the passion that keeps me going and therefore engages myself more. If leaders do not bind themselves or are passionate about the work, it is very likely that they cannot keep up the energy throughout several projects.