FEATURE | ALB In-House 25 >>
there will be a lot more regulatory work this year. Also, over the last few years there was across the industry a big sale of structured products to individuals and institutions and there is likely to be litigation in relation to that. And then as a practical matter, the biggest challenge is closing deals
Lena Chia Managing director, legal & regulations, Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited Top 3 practice areas of outsourced work The three key practice areas of outsourced work are mergers & acquisitions, private equity investments and foreign regulatory issues Recent notable activity Temasek was actively involved in a number of transactions/activities in Singapore and overseas. These include: • Taking up a less than 10% stake in Merrill Lynch for about US$5bn • Investing approximately US$2bn in Barclays PLC • Participating in the US$1bn fund raising exercise by Bharti Infratel, a whollyowned unit of Indian mobile operator Bharti Airtel • Divesting its 100%-owned Singapore power generation company, Tuas Power, for S$4.2bn to SinoSing Power Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Huaneng Group • Defending against the decision of Indonesia’s Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition (KPPU) in relation to anti-monopolistic allegations against Temasek in Indonesia Top 3 most-used domestic and international firms Temasek has no fixed panel of lawyers. We use the services of a number of external law firms: Domestic: Local firms previously engaged by Temasek include: Allen & Gledhill, Drew & Napier, WongPartnership and Rajah & Tann International: International firms include: www.legalbusinessonline.com
Clifford Chance, Latham & Watkins, Herbert Smith, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and White & Case What do you consider the do's and don'ts for outside counsel? We look forward to a partnership relationship with our external counsel. We would expect to work closely with our external counsel, whom we regard as an extension of our internal resources, with the objective of achieving the best outcome for the company. Some important factors which we look for in an external counsel include: • The external counsel should be commercially-minded and provide robust as well as workable solutions and advice. What we do not want is lengthy, textbook type of advice with a long list of assumptions and caveats • The external counsel should also provide adequate staffing and resources for a transaction. Close involvement of a partner or a sufficiently experienced associate is necessary and junior associates need to be supervised • Our projects are usually time-sensitive. Therefore, speed and reasonable turnaround time are a pre-requisite What is your biggest challenge for the coming year? I constantly strive to ensure that we have a legal team comprising of motivated and committed individuals, equipped with the necessary skills and expertise to meet the demands and requirements of a fast-moving and dynamic organisation such as Temasek
now re-named GE Sanyo Credit • Continuing advocacy work on ecomagination, technology, financial services and healthcare regulatory, directly and through trade organisations such as American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, US-Japan Business Council and Keidanren • Launching of cross-business Japan process on regulatory excellence, complementing global effort • Continued recruitment of top legal talent to lead legal efforts in various GE business units Top 3 most-used domestic and international firms Suffice it to say that two of the big four Japanese firms and three of the international firms in Japan comprised about 80% of our outside counsel legal spend in Japan, in 2007 What do you consider the do’s and don’ts for outside counsel? Do’s: • Integrate regulator perspective, and incorporate advocacy as a normal process in all written legal advice • Work with in-house team on developing proactive advocacy strategy to the regulators, to fill in gaps for lack of publicly issued precedent in interpretation • Commit to response times on all matters in advance, and keep those commitments
Laurence W Bates General counsel, GE Japan Top 3 practice areas of outsourced work M&A/transactional, regulatory and advocacy, investigations/compliance Recent notable activity • Disposition of global plastics business, including joint venture interest in Japan, to SABIC, and announcement of disposition of Japan consumer finance business to Shinsei • Acquisition through TOB and integration of Sanyo Electric Credit,
Laurence Bates
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