17 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – AUGUST 2023 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM COVER STORY Led by general counsel Pablo Malay, the team played a leading role in GoTo’s $1.1 billion initial public offering, the world’s fifth-largest IPO in 2022. The legal unit plays an important role in protecting GoTo’s innovations through patents, which is crucial to the growth of any tech company. The team also successfully defended the company in a trademark dispute over the term ‘GoTo.’ The team has also implemented legal technology tools to increase efficiency in end-to-end contract management and automate workflow, including the launch of an automated paperwork process for GoTo’s B2B partners to improve contract negotiation. The legal team at South Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceuticals is a shining example of compliance management in the closely watched healthcare industry. The 11-member team, led by legal department head Jisun Nam, harnessed legal technology to create a compliance system to keep the company’s multinational operations in line with Korea’s Serious Accidents Punishment Act, a stringent regime enacted in 2021 that imposes heavy personal and monetary liability for non-compliance. The unit also runs a dynamic contract standardisation program to ensure efficient transactional review for the company’s various verticals. The team prides itself on the creation of a “compliance culture,” as risks associated with employees violating stock trading norms have heightened. This includes regular awareness programs, and continuous monitoring of critical business functions. The team also led compliance and regulatory checks for the merger of Hanmi Pharma’s holding company Hanmi Science with group company Hanmi Healthcare. The five-member legal team at HP India is led by senior director and associate general counsel Rajeev Nair. In 2022, it successfully assisted the company’s business vertical on numerous strategic deals pertaining to hardware procurement and providing services to multiple customers, including PSUs, NBFCs, Banking and private customers. The Gurgaon and Bengaluru-based team prides itself on its subject-matter expertise, over and above legal capabilities, and continuously evolves to suit dynamic business requirements. Beyond deal assistance, the team has also built models allowing business verticals to function independently of legal for support on work that is of recurring nature. The team’s “four-box model” requires team members to identify support areas and move activities under each support area to four different quadrants of the four-box model which are “Limit, Engage, Leverage and Automate” based on risk and competitive advantage. HP legal has also embraced technological advancements by adopting AI tools in its day-to-day review of contracts. The team also regularly organises training and Q&A sessions, including on competition law, services and solutions, contracts, consumer protection and customer support, for its internal stakeholders to help the business stay updated from a compliance and business perspective. A 40+ member extended legal team successfully faces the challenge of balancing legacy and cutting-edge IT solutions for IBM in Japan, one of the largest markets for the IT giant outside of North America. General counsel Anthony J. Luna leads the team focused on general legal and intellectual property, corporate security, compliance, security, export regulation and government regulations. The unit supported IBM’s large government consulting deals worth approximately several hundred million dollars in 2022, ensuring effective risk mitigation, including the settlement of two multi-million-dollar transactions. The team also led complex IT project litigation and successfully dealt with an increasing number of client outages in an environment of increased data and cybersecurity regulation. The team aims to go beyond their general legal roles to provide a “signature client experience” by offering expert advice and support for business outcomes, and also providing thought Cake Group (formerly Cake DeFi) Singapore GoTo Multiple Jurisdictions Hanmi Pharmaceutical South Korea HP India India IBM Japan Japan Inpex Corporation Japan Jollibee Foods Corporation Philippines Leader Energy Holding Malaysia Mapletree Investments Singapore McDonald’s Korea South Korea Micro Connect Group Hong Kong Nanyang Technological University Singapore Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong, Singapore Sun Hung Kai & Co Hong Kong Tencent Hong Kong, Singapore
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