GC: Tell me about your role and how you came to be at Asics.

Supriya Gogia (SG): Asics opened its Southeast Asia regional headquarters in 2012 here in Singapore. I joined Asics in 2016. Prior to this, I was working for a retail e-commerce company which was a first mover in the region. After a good run with online retail, I was looking to get some hands-on experience in offline retail as well. That’s how Asics happened. Asics has been in the region for six years. It has expanded exponentially during this period. Asics started off fairly early in Europe, and America, and other regions in the world, purely because these regions were seen to be more health conscious and sports-centric back then. This consciousness came to SE Asia in the last 15 to 20 years or so, and now the fitness industry in Asia Pacific is worth a whopping $16.8 billion – the highest value ever. There hasn’t been a better time to be here.

GC: It must be quite interesting for you – as you said you started in the online retail business and then moved offline – what was that transition like?

SG: E-commerce in Southeast Asia has been very hot for the last five years, as it is elsewhere in the world. The only impediment in Southeast Asia is that regulations and laws catch up slowly with technology. Technology is moving much faster than legislation, and this game of playing catch-up sometimes ends up impacting the industry adversely. In-house counsel need ratification for creative business models that companies are trying to implement; when we go to external counsel, they do not necessarily have black and white advice because the industry is nascent, it’s very niche, and there are very few companies which are acting as disruptors and pushing boundaries. At the same time, jurisdictions are in the midst of formalising relevant legislation, which makes it imperative that we work closely with external counsel as well as government authorities. Regulations in different countries in Southeast Asia keep evolving and it’s important for us to understand if any upcoming legislation is going to have an impact, either positive or negative, on existing business plans.

For me, the move from e-commerce has been very interesting indeed. Offline retail is more traditional, organised and risk averse as compared to e-commerce, even regulations concerning offline retail are better set out. There is a lot to learn as counsel because most consumer retail brands take pride in store concepts and their existence, which means both offline and online sales channels are important for consumers. As such, being in a spot which is ever-changing and still very new is quite challenging, but it’s equally interesting if you want to be an industry expert. My experience has been very fulfilling and I think these skills become advantageous along the way. All companies want to be online – most of them are there already – so it is a very interesting prospect for my personal growth and contribution to the retail industry. Omni-channel experience is something that is likely to become more of a necessity than choice.

GC: Do you have any sense of why e-commerce has exploded the way it has, in Asia specifically?

SG: Yes. I feel the reason for that is: one, Asia has a relatively younger population, compared to other parts of the world. And secondly, I feel that when you talk about the fourth revolution, it is different from the first three because the first three began in different parts of the world – the first one started in Britain, the second in North America and so on, but I feel the fourth industrial revolution – and this is completely a personal opinion – it started all over the globe, all at once. For instance, even if Apple is designing a phone in California, there is a manufacturer assembling it in China. It is a very collaborative revolution, where countries are coming together to give the end product to the consumer. This is what makes Asia very relevant in this revolution because it is not left behind, it is in fact playing a very significant role. This e-commerce explosion is also partly due to cheaper labour costs and strengthening of the manufacturing industry in this region. Because labour is cheaper in Asia, we have a growing service industry which is well equipped to support e-commerce operations and a massive manufacturing set-up. These are industries which give a strong foundation to e-commerce.

GC: Asics is looking to increase presence in other markets in Southeast Asia soon – how do these markets differ from those where Asics is already well-established?

SG: Asia is unique in that sense. Not all Asian countries offer seamless market entry for foreign companies, some economies are closed and protected. When a Japanese company like ours wants to establish a foothold – it’s not free entry. For some countries you either need to partner with a local venture or you need to invest additional capital to be able to engage in industry-specific activities. That said, these markets have immense potential for expansion, with a growing middle class and a surge in awareness surrounding fitness and sporting goods. We work very closely with external counsels in these countries since language can be a barrier at times. The majority of government documents in Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand are in local languages which require local expertise to decipher.

GC: As a large, recognisable brand, intellectual property must be of particular concern. Could you talk a little about that?

SG: Yes. Intellectual property is the most valuable asset for any global company – for consumer goods it’s the most important piece of brand management. As I mentioned before, the bulk of manufacturing for consumer goods is done in Asia, and this comes with a downside for brand protection. There could be instances where one factory might be manufacturing goods for different brands, and no matter how well you articulate the liability clauses, how meticulous your contracts are, there is bound to be leakage. Leakage is when original products are leaked through the factories into open markets. Brands also face issues of counterfeit products, which originate from factories which create copies of authentic products. When you operate in a region that manufactures, you have to be extra cautious of these infringements, which are potential high risks for the brand.

GC: Is there anything that you see coming on the horizon that might affect the industry?

SG: I do think the concept of augmented reality is quite intriguing, as well as the trend of pop-up stores – which is quite common in Asia – where you can try a pair of footwear, get the “touch and feel” of the product and use a tablet or iPad available at the pop-up to order that product. The product could be delivered to your address the very same day. You don’t need to stock up inventory, the space required is minimal, which ensures you don’t pay exorbitant high street rentals and human resources involved are far less. I do foresee this as being a popular way to shop for countries where internet penetration is high.

When Brent Irvin joined Tencent as group general counsel nearly nine years ago, the Chinese upstart company was already a domestic tech wunderkind, boasting revenue close to RMB 20bn. But few foresaw the trajectory it would take from there: with record growth in 2017, the company is now valued at more than $477bn.

‘We have always been about combining social and content, but in the beginning we were more games-focused,’ says Irvin.

‘It’s still a huge part of the business but over time we’ve expanded into movies, video, music and other forms of entertainment. We’ve added online finance and payments to our bow as well.’

The story of Tencent’s dramatic growth is becoming a semi-regular occurrence in the Chinese tech world. The country now has nine of the world’s top 20 tech companies. Only the United States is better represented. Among them is electronics company Xiaomi, the world’s fifth-largest seller of smartphones.

‘We’ve grown very quickly from a start-up to become a Fortune 500 company within eight years. It’s like working in a different company every half year,’ says Bin Sun, general counsel at Xiaomi.

Originally an online-only retailer, Xiaomi, which recently floated on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, opened its first bricks and mortar store two years ago in a bid to compete with companies such as Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, which began selling smartphone devices offline, increasing competition in the market. This brought a new set of challenges for Xiaomi’s in-house legal team.

‘Our retail stores have grown very quickly. We started out with just one attorney; six months later I had to add a whole team. Our lawyers have to learn different business skills all the time.’

The legal team has grown ten-fold since Bin Sun joined almost three years ago – Xiaomi now has around 80 lawyers based in its Beijing headquarters, with teams outside China based in India, Indonesia and Spain, with plans for other EU countries in the near future. However, the team is still relatively small compared to other Fortune 500 companies, which is a challenge when trying to keep up with the growth of the business.

That challenge is one not dissimilar to that faced by Tencent. Under Irvin’s management, Tencent’s legal team has seen an increase from 20 to 350 lawyers, with many new specialties required to service the growing expanse of business offerings.

‘Different types of business require different types of lawyers. Online finance has become an important part of our business. We were lacking experts in banking regulation, so had to build out new teams. We talk about IP and technology a lot more now, which also requires more weight,’ explains Irvin.

‘One of the differences between us and other big Chinese firms is that we do a lot more overseas deals, outside of China. We have a need for deal lawyers globally – we do a lot of deals in London, New York and California – and it’s not just regulatory work.’

‘When it comes to hiring external lawyers, “knowing the Tencent way” is very valuable. We put a high premium on lawyers who understand our business well. We often end up with relationships based on a lot of volume (in terms of deals), so we want to build long-term relationships and try to be innovative when it comes to billing, rather than just maximising on price.’

Uniquely China?

China is a notoriously tough market to operate in. While President Xi Jinping has pronounced that China is open for business on the international stage, there are still unique roadblocks to building a successful business in China. Between an intellectual property regime that is still finding its feet and the complex regulatory environment, doing business in China can be difficult at the best of times. However, according to Irvin, the challenges for most companies operating in the tech sector are largely the same as you would find globally.

‘I’m American and have worked across various countries, I know a fair number of GCs, and you find a lot of the issues are the same,’ he says.

‘You worry about competition laws whether you’re at Google or Facebook or Tencent – when you make products that improve people’s lives, there’s a certain amount of increased regulatory scrutiny and that is the biggest challenge we are facing now.’

Providing strong leadership is crucial to overcoming such challenges; a skill that Irvin says he has needed to develop quickly in order to meet the changing requirements of his role.

‘I’m not a big fan of one-size-fits-all management. To me, a very important part of leadership is judgement and that’s often very contextual: how to handle certain cases or people or teams,’ he says.

‘It’s a cliché but you’ve got to hire good people and you’ve got to empower them; there’s no way you can do it yourself once you reach a certain scale. I do not micromanage, so a fair amount of my time is spent making sure we have the right teams and leaders in place.’

This tailored approach to management might be well-suited to the often turbulent life of an in-house counsel in China. Still, for all the differences, the core concerns for counsel stay the same, according to Irvin.

‘The most important thing for me as GC is to understand your business needs and to be able to build a team with strong execution that is highly adaptive. It is challenging to find talent in such a fast-growing environment. We tend to focus on people’s ability to learn and motivation rather than past experience.’

Leveraging Intellect

Bin Sun took over as general counsel during a particularly turbulent time for Xiaomi. In 2016, sales had plummeted and the company fell from first to fifth place in China’s smartphone market. The reasons for this are varied, with reported organisational problems through the supply chain – but one of the main explanations was a reliance on online sales, which plummeted between 2015 and 2016 from 70 million devices down to a reported 41 million.

In an attempt to turn things around quickly, Xiaomi embarked on a new strategy to compete in the bricks and mortar world of offline retail. In addition to its own products, Xiaomi would fill the stores with products developed and produced by start-ups, hand-picked and funded by Xiaomi. The hope was that these start-ups would complement the company’s established products to create an eco-system of digital tech goods that would be enough to lure customers into the Xiaomi stores.

This strategy, together with a concerted push into overseas markets such as India, was designed to pull Xiaomi back to the top of the leaderboard.

However, the international expansion brought its own headaches, and invited patent lawsuits in expansion markets – even some in its home country. In one such case in India, Xiaomi and its distributor, Flipkart, were blocked from importing, marketing and selling smartphones that were infringing eight patents held by Ericsson. It was one of the biggest lawsuits that Xiaomi faced from a major company.

By the time Bin Sun was brought in, Xiaomi had drawn heavy criticism for its intellectual property woes – making her previous role as head of IP at China’s BOE Technology Group a definite advantage.

‘Being able to speak the same language as IP professionals means I can make confident decisions on high-stake matters. It certainly helps in my role as GC. IP law, especially the patent law for tech, is basically the same as the one designed more than 100 years ago when tech was not integrated,’ she says.

‘There is no way you can get complete freedom to operate in hi-tech. Even Apple and Samsung, who have been in the field for so long, are still facing tonnes of litigation every year. I think this will continue in the future.’

Belonging exclusively to the digital space means that this is less of an issue for Tencent.

‘In our business, we are talking mostly about individual copyrights. Tencent Music and Tencent Video – the second largest in China – would not exist if there was wide-scale piracy,’ says Irvin.

‘In the past four or five years, the government and other companies have played a big role in significantly improving digital copyright to a point where I don’t believe there is now wide-scale piracy, and the IP system is good enough to support us.’

The reason behind this is not that Chinese courts are establishing new rights, but that they are enforcing the rights that already exist for copyright owners – and doing so in a relevant way. Nearly 87,000 copyright-related cases were filed in China last year, according to data compiled by China’s Supreme People’s Court – a 15-fold increase from 2006.

Last year, a Beijing court awarded Tencent more than $1m in damages in a copyright infringement case. The defendant, streaming site and hardware manufacturer BaoFeng, was found to have streamed episodes of The Voice of China without permission from Tencent, which had licensed exclusive streaming rights.

Irvin’s experience in IP has proved invaluable when it comes to advising other companies within the Tencent ecosystem too – he sits on the board of music-streaming companies including Tencent Music and Gaana in India.

‘You want a diversity of opinions on a board so for highly regulated businesses having a lawyer on board can have benefits. By itself, just being a GC won’t help you on a board – I had already been a commercially driven deal lawyer, that was my background, so I have a good business sense.’

Driving Innovation

When it comes to legal innovation, both Tencent and Xiaomi are well positioned.

‘We are fortunate. Being a tech company, our attorneys will design the kind of tools we want and our engineers will put them together,’ says Bin Sun.

For larger, more complicated work, the legal team tends to buy in IT systems from the outside market, which tends to be a one-size-fits-all approach.

‘Tech has much more impact on project management and documentation, for knowledge accumulation and transfer it also helps. We are starting to see AI penetrate into legal, but it is yet to become a competent tool that we can use to support daily work.’

At Tencent, the company has recently been asked to work with Chinese courts to use its mobile messaging and social media app, WeChat, as a tool to help the litigation process. Parties to a legal proceeding can now submit documents, verify identification and pay legal fees through the service.

‘It’s a great opportunity for us to build a product innovation where the client or end users are judges,’ says Irvin.

When it comes to implementing legal tech in-house, the company faces other challenges.

‘One of the issues we faced as a Chinese company is that there aren’t a lot of really good off-the-shelf solutions for IP management software. You can buy them here, but they are in English not Chinese,’ says Irvin.

‘We have developed our own IP management software and set up a litigation system in-house. In the tech space, you are often facing new legal issues – technology develops faster than the law. Solving complex legal issues in new ways or coming up with a framework to address various new regulations are the main two innovations I’m seeing.’

Going public

For Bin Sun and her legal team, Xiaomi’s public debut this summer – the world’s biggest technology float in almost four years – was a steep learning curve.

The team played a key role in influencing the listing terms of the Hong Kong stock market, which historically has not been accessible for hi-tech companies. This changed in April 2018, when the Hong Kong Stock Exchange implemented the largest set of changes to listing rules in decades. The new regime allows the listing of biotech companies that do not meet any of the financial eligibility tests of the main board, high-growth and innovative companies with weighted voting rights structures, and issuers seeking a secondary listing in Hong Kong. The amended law will allow Hong Kong to capitalise on opportunities from up-and-coming biotech companies, which make up a large share of pre-revenue companies seeking a listing. As of June 2018, 26 Chinese tech companies have offered to sell their shares through public offerings.

‘We are lucky that the Hong Kong market is becoming more open and realising the importance of having hi-tech businesses,’ says Bin Sun.

‘It’s very important for a tech company not to be shortsighted – we don’t want our operation to be heavily influenced by the stock market, we want to focus on our long-term goal and continuously grow to become a great company.’

Despite the company’s lower-than-expected valuation – Xiaomi settled on $54bn despite media reports suggesting it had hoped for $100bn – the listing was a huge success for the future of the company.

‘We actively participated in the new amendment to the listing rules in Hong Kong. We were involved in the amendment to that of China mainland – neither had accepted dual-class corporate governance before. We prepared our own IPO project at the same time as working with government officials on the law amendment. It was a very intense time and has made a remarkable memory for the legal team.’

GC: Technology in finance is a hot topic – especially here in Hong Kong. What are your perspectives on this and what is Credit Suisse doing in this area?

Crystal Lalime (CL): Technology is changing finance, it is changing banking and, in the process, creating new pathways for Legal to play a role.

Recently, we partnered with a fintech company called Canopy Pte Ltd. What their technology allows is for clients to consolidate their accounts on the automated account aggregation platform, so an individual can manage their whole portfolio from a single platform, which is quite a powerful tool for our clients. We identified a company that we thought provided a very good solution for our clients and took an investment in the company to provide that service to our clients.

This is a major trend in the industry and we are very much a part of it.

GC: Can you describe the partnership approach that Credit Suisse takes to working with start-ups?

CL: With start-ups, you see a lot of interesting technology, but a lot of the times it becomes about who they partner with, where their distribution chain is, what their path to market is and whether there is a really strong use case. As lawyers, we can’t necessarily keep up with the technology development, but we certainly have ideas about how they can be partnered with or integrated into Credit Suisse.

Our approach so far has centred on just that – partnering. A lot of AI technology partners may be attracted to partnering on certain projects with us because of the large data dumps we can provide to train their algorithms, but oftentimes finding a use case that makes sense on the legal technology side for CS and the technology provider can be time-consuming.

GC: When working with start-ups, what role is Legal asked to play?

CL: As we look at these opportunities with start-ups, that also presents new challenges for Legal. Oftentimes, start-ups aren’t as well governed as we’d expect – particularly with the high standards we’re accustomed to operating within. Legal plays a prominent role in advising on the due diligence and sometime restructure of start-ups, which isn’t unexpected – these are M&A deals after all – but the issues which arise can be more varied.

When you’re running a start-up, budget is a huge consideration, but when you’re working with financial institutions – areas like compliance are ones where there isn’t room for error. Sometimes you’ll see that there are certainly the right intentions in mind, but a start-up might employ a junior compliance officer to help them get on the right track – but as you scale up and you’re running a big platform – the compliance may be extremely onerous.

Once a partner is identified, there’s a whole host of further issues for Legal to consider. What are the processes in place for handling data, moving data and protecting data? If we’re co-developing products, who is going to own the IP? What about if there’s interest from other financial institution’s to licence the technology – how do we handle that? It takes a lot of creativity and diligence, as well as constant training and upskilling for the legal teams who may have previously been advising on selling products and are now involved in offering software services. There is a lot of crossover and innovation requiring product and IP legal expertise. We’re not just providing advice on legal issues – advising on strategy.

GC: Being asked to work on projects like this is outside of the typical scope we often hear from GCs – particularly in finance. Have you had to adjust your approach in terms of hiring or training your staff as a result?

CL: That is a real challenge that we face. It comes back to the core values of our GC department, which are legal advisory, legal service provider and strategic adviser. To continue to provide these in a changing environment, it means that we have to be constantly upskilling – and that goes both for myself and for my team.

It also means that I’m more frequently taking stock of what skillsets we have on our team and what we might need to stay ahead – one day it could be looking for a programmer or a computer science person, the next we could be looking at these start-up-style deals, where perhaps we need people specialised in IP or outsourcing – it’s really about constantly staying on top of what we have and what we need.

I think as a broader trend, this is true for a lot of legal departments. The nature of legal work, as much as it stays the same, the applications change and how we go about completing that work is changing too. At the moment, many of the lawyers on my team are working with technologists (e.g. programmers and other platform specialists) – that’s a direct result of a lot of our legal documentation being automated. On the team, you have to have lawyers willing to do what may be perceived as non-traditional legal work and explain to non-lawyers our trade. That goes both ways too – on the other side, we need to have programmers and technologists who are willing to work with lawyers. It’s a paradigm shift and the overlap between technology and legal is growing constantly – and that’s not something I see changing any time soon.

‘You have to, to serve these markets, re-imagine how
money can be managed and moved, because there’s
going to be more change in the next five years in financial
services than has happened in the past 30,’
– Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal.

Global investment in fintech companies hit an all-time high of US$27.4bn in 2017, an increase of 18% year on year, with the market showing no sign of slowing down. Led by China, the fintech revolution has spread across the rest of Asia, while simultaneously gaining traction in the UK, US and Europe.

Conversely Hong Kong, which should have been first to be swept up in the trend given its proximity to China, has largely failed to follow suit, gaining it the reputation of being a fintech ‘laggard’. But it hasn’t always been this way.

In the 1990s Hong Kong was seen as a front runner in financial innovation when it came up with mobile payments – a technology that is still being developed in other parts of the world. However since then Hong Kong has taken a back seat compared to the rest of APAC, particularly Singapore, which was quick to emulate China’s success.

‘Hong Kong are trying to figure out what’s next – they came up with this innovative idea of the mobile wallet but that was ten years ago,’ says Theodora Lau, founder of US-based Unconventional Ventures.

‘I do think the energy has picked up, Hong Kong has been sitting on its last great idea and now there is a new infusion of money to spur them on.’

Breaking the Shackles

In his 2018/9 budget speech Paul Chan, Hong Kong’s financial secretary announced he would allocate HK$50bn to the development of fintech, artificial intelligence and biotech, in order to ‘stay ahead of the game’. Over the next five years HK$500m will be injected directly into the financial services sector, a move which should help improve the attractiveness of startups to larger institutions in particular.

‘If you don’t have the banks open to business you don’t have a fintech market. The idea that fintech startups would come and completely change the banking industry single handedly was an aspiration not grounded in reality. What you’ve seen in most emerging fintech markets around the world is a view of collaboration,’ says Steve Monaghan, CEO of Hong Kong-based fintech firm Gen.Life and former chief innovation officer at Singapore’s DBS Bank.

Hong Kong’s de facto central bank and regulator, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), has been criticised for focusing too heavily on encouraging Hong Kong’s large existing financial institutions to innovate, while regulatory constraints have kept out smaller technology players.

‘Hong Kong has a very archaic banking system where until now there has been no pressure on incumbents to modify what they do. This leads to a system that lags behind the likes of Europe and Australia,’ explains Monaghan.

‘In Singapore, you had very much the same dynamic in the beginning – a regulator whose sole answer to every question was no. But now you have someone who is driving the agenda quite actively.’

However, with a major push from the Hong Kong government and a HK$50bn investment to drive innovation, Hong Kong may finally be on the verge of big change.

Rethinking Regulation

With any growing industry comes increased risk and regulation, even more so when you are dealing with people’s money.

The HKMA published revised guidelines on the authorization of virtual banking in Hong Kong in May, with the first licenses to be issued at the end of this year. More than 50 companies have expressed an interest including one of the strongest homegrown players WeLab, the mobile lending company, which secured the largest fundraising in Hong Kong last year of US$220m.

‘We look to be a serious contender for the license, it will allow us to expand and diversify our business, bringing financial inclusion to those that may not otherwise have access to traditional banks,’ says Patricia Ho, senior legal counsel at WeLab.

The HKMA is preparing to launch a Faster Payments System, which will make it possible for people to transfer Hong Kong dollars and yuan between accounts at different banks more quickly, and by using a telephone number rather than a bank account number. The faster payments system is just one of seven smart banking initiatives being introduced by the HKMA. Other initiatives from the banking regulator include the creation of a new policy around opening up banks’ application programming interfaces to technology players.

‘There has been some talk that certain banking processes may be able to be done online, including anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) requirements, without the need for face to face contact,’ says Errol Bong, director, regulatory and legal initiatives at Credit Suisse.

‘Being able to do virtual KYC checks would be a game changer for banks. It would make us more competitive. One issue is the increased use of technology on the on-boarding process such as the use of WeChat by Chinese clients. Banks were not certain whether they could accept KYC documents over WeChat but the introduction of the HKMA’s virtual banking guidelines may indicate that regulators are more willing to accept the influence of technology on the client on-boarding process.’

In an effort to harmonise the development of regulation, HKMA launched its Fintech Supervisory Sandbox scheme in September 2016, allowing banks to conduct trials of newly-developed technology on a pilot basis, without the need to achieve full compliance with existing supervisory requirements.

In a related move, the Securities and Futures Commission and the Insurance Authority announced the creation of their own sandboxes. The HKMA said in a statement that the three would be linked so as to offer ‘a single point of entry for pilot trials of cross-sector fintech projects’.

After being criticised for only being available to authorised institutions, the Sandbox has this year been opened up to technology players – a move commended by the start-up community.

As a result participants have been able to reduce development costs and as of March this year, around 20 products rolled out to the market.

‘Start-ups in particular tend not to have free cash flow to pay hourly rates, which means law firms that follow traditional economic and pricing models are less likely to be able to develop new and innovative ways to serve fintech start-ups and achieve an acceptable win-win,’ says Ben McQuhae, general counsel of FinFabrik.

Leading Lawyers

It can be difficult for start ups to attract experienced lawyers when they are in the early stages of development, hence many do not have an in-house legal team until reaching further stages of maturity.

‘In our experience legal has been a catalyst for greater efficiency. Founders often find themselves negotiating directly with potential investors and strategic partners and having to produce documents and make decisions of a legal nature with little, if any, legal or negotiating experience,’ says McQuhae.

For FinFabrik, who hired an in-house counsel much earlier than usual, the benefits of having a lawyer on board have been paramount. Joining in the midst of Series A funding negotiations, McQuhae’s experience helped the company secure the best possible financial backing.

‘We realised the terms on offer were not the best available and quickly closed a seed deal instead, preserving founder control and a significant majority equity position for future rounds. It was a great outcome for us.’

Larger, more established fintechs such as WeLab have prioritised the role of legal counsel so that it sits within the company’s top team.

‘My CEO recognises how important compliance is to driving growth. I am empowered to raise awareness to all staff so that everyone understands the latest developments and how to deal with them practically. An in-house lawyer must build themselves in as a stakeholder of the business,’ says Ho.

However the role of the in-house lawyer is still in its early stages, much like the regulatory frameworks they are expected to advise on. McQuhae counsels that it is vital not to separate legal from the fin or the tech.

‘For us, clear regulation can’t come quickly enough, though we have no doubt that current regulatory uncertainty around fintech and cryptos is temporary. It is encouraging to see more jurisdictions introducing new regulations to provide certainty, and to see established global financial institutions investing in fintech infrastructure,’ he says.

‘For Hong Kong there is no single established set of fintech rules to date – the sooner this happens the better.’

One area that is currently sparking debate in Hong Kong is the movement around blockchain and consumer privacy data.

‘The future of European and more mature markets has to be where the customer completely owns their own data. Privacy standards and consumer expectations are a lot higher abroad, more so than in China,’ says Monaghan.

The issue of privacy is a particularly difficult one in terms of regulation, as McQuhae points out.

‘There is a loud and ongoing debate around crypto-assets and blockchain which we believe should be separated. Blockchain is a technology and whilst regulators will need to educate themselves about its potential use and associated risks in their markets, it is important that regulation does not stifle innovation by regulating technology,’ he says.

‘We’ve seen the distribution of products through platform providers, under new online distribution rules there becomes a lot of onus on who is providing these digital platforms. The day of someone putting up a platform to distribute a product and just taking a step back are over in Asia.’

Hong Kong on the International Stage

The rethought approach taken to regulating fintech in Hong Kong has been welcomed across the board from financial institutes large and small, with further changes to better harmonise Hong Kong with China improving the attractiveness of the wider financial landscape.

‘We’re seeing more domestic reforms, such as Bond Connect, Stock Connect, the virtual bank. We are also seeing the introduction of open-ended fund company rules to attract more funds to set up shop domestically in HK as opposed to in the Caymans. These are two big reforms,’ says Bong.

‘We’ll be looking at the domestic initiatives to make Hong Kong more competitive. If we get more funds setting up shop here and they’re private funds, the regulators have specifically mentioned that perhaps these private funds can use prime brokers as their custodian, which would be good for people and institutions that have a prime brokerage business, who are happy to service those funds. So hopefully that will make Hong Kong a more attractive destination for everyone all round.’

Hong Kong’s proximity to China means it attracts the best of Chinese talent and investment, while sharing a similar market that is both more western and relevant to the rest of Asia.

‘One thing you have in Hong Kong which is an advantage over Singapore, is an ecosystem. There’s a fantastic market in Hong Kong, it’s scalable – you can walk across the border in 30 minutes and test in China with the consumer’, says Monaghan.

‘What you do in Singapore doesn’t translate to Indonesia or the Philippines, there’s much less of a market for learning. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is still far ahead but Hong Kong is closing that gap quickly which is great to see.’

The HKMA has also ramped up its cross-border collaboration following the signing of a UK-Hong Kong FinTech Bridge, in 2017. The Bridge, which commits both parties to encourage fintech firms to participate in industry focused events, creates a single point of contact for fintech companies by the UK Department for International Trade and InvestHK, and provides support for fintech start-ups to establish themselves in the opposite jurisdiction.

The impact of this is already beginning to show. According to data analysts Accenture, investment in Hong Kong fintech companies more than doubled in 2017 to US$545.7m, up from US$215.5m in 2016 and US$107.5m in 2015, putting it well ahead of its rivals Singapore, and Australia.

The China Connection

As the ongoing ‘trade war’ between China and the US continues to fray, testing relations between the two, Lau sees the potential for Hong Kong to capitalise on its role as a gateway – which could prove a boon for fintech.

‘Hong Kong doesn’t have that same obstacle – it has autonomy, it’s legal and administration systems are separate which allows it to do more things,’ she says.

Lau, who was born and raised in Hong Kong but lives in Washington DC, notes that there has also been a noted move toward attracting and retaining talent.

‘There’s a lot of talk at the moment of students from overseas not wanting to come to the US, or if they do there is a higher tendency for them to go back to China and Hong Kong to work,’ she says.

One reason for this is US immigration policies which Lau says are not ‘necessarily welcoming’. In contrast, the Hong Kong government is actively promoting an agenda of its own – last month (August) it introduced a new immigration policy to attract talented professionals. The ‘Talent List’ is open to people around the world who specialise in 11 professions that the Hong Kong government defines as the most crucial for the country’s economic development. These include innovation and technology experts in blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, data engineering and robotics.

‘When you look at the efforts from the government and regulators in Hong Kong and China, and the push to get people back to the territory, it’s never been a better time to start something there,’ says Lau.

Adding to the potential of Hong Kong in the medium term is the ongoing Greater Bay Area initiative, a project seeking to create a world-class city cluster, connecting the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau region. By 2030, the region is expected to play a leading role in manufacturing, innovation, shipping, trade and finance.

‘I think this will be one to watch. It has the physical connection to mainland China, a diverse and educated talent pool, investment and infrastructure. Whether they will be able to recreate in Asia what we have in the US – a Silicon Valley – will be interesting to see,’ says Lau.

‘The fact the Greater Bay Initiative includes Hong Kong and Shenzhen – the PRC’s tech epicentre – presents a huge opportunity for tech companies and investors.’

Anti-corruption and anti-bribery practices are a particularly pertinent issue at present, as next year the OECD will conduct its first evaluation of Japan since 2011. Last time Japan was evaluated, the results were far from flattering, with foreign bribery and kansei dango – a form of bureaucrat-led collusion to rig bids for public projects – cited as major issues which required tackling.

Chuck Duross, head of Morrison & Foerster’s global anti-corruption practice – who most recently served as a deputy chief in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice, where he led the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit and was in charge of all of the DOJ’s FCPA investigations, prosecutions and resolutions in the United States – gave a scene-setting presentation to open the day – offering a unique insight into the practices of that agency, which has asserted increasingly broad jurisdiction and international scope. Duross was joined by Morrison & Foerster Asia-based partners, who each shared their practical experience:

• Timothy Blakely (head of litigation, Morrison & Foerster, Hong Kong)
• Daniel Levison (head of litigation, Morrison & Foerster, Singapore)
• Chie Yakura (litigation partner, Morrison & Foerster, Tokyo)
• Yuka Teraguchi (litigation partner, Morrison & Foerster, Tokyo)

In the first session, putting in place proper infrastructure to prevent anti-corruption practices was a common characteristic amongst those who had a successful track record of managing and navigating incidents. Duross provided practical insight into what government investigators look for and what to do when faced with crisis.

The issue of resourcing and staffing of the compliance function was the second key area of discussion, with a distinct contrast in the different approaches taken between the various organisations represented. One general counsel in attendance cited a strong relationship between the board and the compliance function as the top predictor for adequate investment and importance afforded to anti-corruption practices. Budget was a common issue for many in attendance, with the cost of investigations, as well as the perceived risk of a business relative to its budget, both cited as difficulties when implementing internal anti-bribery and anti-corruption programmes.

In the final session of the day, how technology can be used to improve compliance with anti-corruption legislation and regulation was discussed. Compliance training was the most common area of use for those in attendance and was most frequently utilised by major multi-national companies. One general counsel explained seeing a major improvement in compliance rates after developing the training into an interactive format, specifically a video game, with high scores rewarded with prizes.

GC: Can you tell me a little bit about your background, how you came to be working in-house, in the financial services industry and at Panin Dai-ichi Life in particular?

Randi Ikhlas Sardoni (RIS): I was born into a legal background family – my grandfather, father, uncles, aunts, cousins, brother, you name it. We hand over books from generation to generation. But that is in the private sector – surprisingly there has been no one working in-house – so I had to take the first step in the family. I only spent a couple of months in private practice, and then I took my career to work as in-house counsel at one of the biggest state-owned banks in Indonesia.

I found out that the insurance sector in Indonesia was growing and offering a lot of opportunities and challenges, and also that there was a scarcity of local talent. With the economy growing and many insurance companies entering the Indonesian market and competing for the same talent, there is a shortage in the market. Now I am at an insurance company, and have fallen in love with the sector.

GC: What are the main challenges of the Indonesian insurance market?

RIS: Indonesia is an emerging market and has high potential for the insurance sector. The main challenge currently is the market penetration. Insurance penetration in Indonesia is still around 2.9% compared to GDP. Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia have much higher penetration.

GC: Why is it so low?

RIS: I think one of the problems is financial literacy, particularly insurance literacy. There is scepticism about the insurance industry in Indonesia. The Indonesian financial authority, the OJK, has addressed this issue and it has required insurance companies to have a campaign for financial literacy, to increase market penetration.

GC: Can you talk a little bit about the regulatory environment in Indonesia?

RIS: The legal team will transform – we are no longer a braking system in the car, but we will become a navigation system. We are shifting our role from the defending player into the playmaker. We have to be able to provide strong legal advice and also excellent risk advice to the board and this ability will help the board to be the one sitting in the driving seat to direct the company. The legal team has to have strategies for providing sound legal input with strong business acumen, in anticipating changing regulations.

In ensuring the fair and supportive regulatory reform, government relations activities must also be addressed. General counsel must act as the advocate of the company by utilising the industry association bargain with the regulator.

GC: Are there any other main business challenges that the company is grappling with at the moment?

RIS: There is an untapped market in Indonesia. To become one of the top five or top three insurers in the Indonesian insurance business, we as a company have to produce a value proposition for prospective customers, cover for all the various social and economic channels, and develop the ability to penetrate the untapped market and create the system of brokerage. Indonesia has such a huge population, with only 2.9% market penetration. Currently many of the population are in a household of mainly generation X and Y. So that will be the focus of the company, and we are helping the company to be able to achieve those goals.

GC: What does your workload look like day to day? What occupies the majority of your time?

RIS: As the general counsel of the company, I am of course the subject legal matter expert. Currently, legal issues are still dominating the daily workload. However, standardisation of legal work and IT have helped users to have faster and more immediate attention from the legal department. So aside from the helping with the legal issues, we are currently in the process of designing a platform for stakeholders to have their wholesale legal needs met in one IT application, in one single window.

We are asking our stakeholders what is their expectation of the legal department, and then, in a couple of years, we will have that kind of application.

GC: What has been the highlight of your in-house career so far?

RIS: Probably experiencing a fast-track career compared to my peers in the market and the industry. Despite being part of the millennial generation, the board has entrusted me to serve them with the company secretary function and also with the counsel of the company. I think I certainly understand that this responsibility has to be managed properly, and also as currently we are in the spirit of the Asian Games, I am co-opting the energy of Asia tagline to the legal team – that youth spirit. My team are the problem-solvers, and we operate as a start-up legal team within the company.

GC: What does your legal team look like?

RIS: We currently have a lean, but highly effective legal department. Currently we have three lawyers – one who is responsible for corporate legal and secretarial, another responsible for government relations, and another for litigation respectively.

GC: What has been the most challenging moment of your legal career so far?

RIS: We are currently helping the company to embrace a new era, and we are also repositioning our place from legal advisory to business advisers. We are now really trying to create initiatives that translate that vision of legal and business advisers. We are trying to really listen to the business units and respond to them. We are now even thinking about having an internship programme into the business units, so that the legal team have experience in the business unit. After that, they will go back into the legal team with the proper knowledge – not only sitting at the desk doing the legal job, but really knowing what the business person is doing and experiencing for a certain period of time.

GC: What have been the major challenges or activities for you and your legal team over the past year?

RIS: One is always about digitalisation. Everyone is doing this, and we are now also expecting to be able to adapt and support the company in the digitalisation process. Technology has been a topic of conversation within the industry. We are in the age of the digital disruption, financial technology disruption, and now people are looking at insurance technology (instech). So that will also be something that we have to be able to adapt to, and also help the company to compete with that.

In terms of regulation, insurers have to be ready to spin off their Sharia units, as required by the 2014 insurance law. We have to submit the blueprint for the spinoffs by 2020, and they have to have spun off by 2024, so this is becoming a hot topic of conversation everywhere in the industry. We have to be able to ensure that the process of spin off is running smoothly and successfully.

Now, the issues relate to how to ensure that when the spinoff company is independent from the holding company or the conventional company, it will be competing with the other Sharia companies in Indonesia, and not with the conventional company.

There will be a lot of discussion about how to also train the financial advisers. Currently, we have financial advisers that hold two licences, a conventional licence and a Sharia licence. But after the regulation takes effect, they have to advise just the conventional or just the Sharia businesses. So these are will be several things that have to be taken care of and discussed properly.

GC: What else have you got coming up on the horizon over the next 12 months or so?

RIS: The next 12-24 months will also be about how to simplify the insurance process, to help society increase financial literacy, so people will be able to understand an insurance product properly. We all know that there is so much complicated language, so we have to able to simplify that language into more commonly understood language for society. I think that will also be the process over the next 24 months.

GC: As the leaders of international legal teams, what are the main challenges of managing your team from afar?

Tugbay Ekinli (TE): For me, the time zone is the biggest challenge. Between me and some of my lawyers, there is a 15-hour time difference, which means we are almost never live at the same time during the business day. My typical day looks like this: I start with China and my Southeast Asian teams. In the afternoon, I work for the Middle East, North Africa and UK-based teams. At night, after 9 pm, it is my Latin America time. We don’t have much of a work-life balance because of that, but it’s the same for Nicky and for all of us.

We are using several different technological tools to have our team meetings every month. We use Skype, WebEx and VTCs to connect with our teams.

Peggy Lim (PL): I think we make it work. Although there is technology, we do try to have at least one formal face-to-face meeting a month, and then individually we have regular calls on a wider team basis. For example, I have a call with the Asian Pacific Consumer Healthcare lawyers on a bimonthly or quarterly basis, where we use the opportunity to share common issues, emerging trends, lessons learned, things like that, so that we do try to connect that way using technology. I think that has worked.

Nicola Fell (NF): I have found that this requires a different source of management and leadership. In the past, I think my teams have largely been co-located with me, bar one or two exceptions. Now, it is very different. I’m having to think much harder about timing, the logistics of communication, and how to help the lawyers feel connected when they are a lot further from the centre and from each other.

GC: Between you, you are responsible for many lawyers in many different cultures and jurisdictions. How do you account for that as leaders?

PL: I think firstly, the hiring process and talent development is critical, because ultimately we need to be able to rely on and trust the teams in the market. Working at a regional level, you can never be the expert on the local laws and regulations.

From a cultural perspective, Australians and New Zealanders are quite different from, for example, your Southeast Asia and China colleagues, so just being aware of the cultural difference is necessary. And not just in the human-to-human interaction, but also the environment: understanding the business environment that presents itself in different markets is important for us to be able to provide practical advice, as well as the right type of guidance that the team needs.

NF: I fully agree. I’ll add to what Peggy said, as much as we all travel to be with our teams individually, we can’t know everything that’s going on in an individual market. That’s actually not what the role is. I quite often see it as being more of the glue. You’re helping your team members to access information, resources, and be central bodies of subject matter knowledge.

The fact that we’re well connected across the organisation means that if a lawyer in Australia has got a problem, and we’ve seen the same issue come up elsewhere, we provide that connection and make sure the knowledge is being shared. Or, if they need access to a subject matter expert who’s sitting in London, we connect them. That’s a big part of the role. Obviously, we can provide coaching and guidance and be there as an escalation point, but we certainly can’t be taking every decision.

TE: Our roles are really leadership roles. Under the three of us, there are more than 160 lawyers, and this team is managing the legal teams in more than 125 countries.

Our role is essentially managing those who are leading the legal affairs in those countries. Sometimes we are supporting them on some country matters or policy matters, but generally, our roles are managerial rather than operational.

GC: With the pressure to do more with less always a concern for in-house counsel, how important is innovation to the legal team?

NF: I think it is becoming increasingly important. It’s actually quite difficult to measure what is the value of your legal function, when a lot of it is about risk avoidance.

We have a philosophy that we call ‘business partner guardian’. We partner very closely with the business, so that we understand what they’re trying to do, and we try to operate in solution mode wherever possible. But we also have what we call a guardian function, which is ultimately to help manage the risks and, frankly, corporate reputation.

Our client is GSK, as in the corporate. It’s not an individual business leader or an individual business team. We have to navigate that interface, but I think because we’re so closely plugged in with the business, we’re very conscious that we can’t just be a corporate overhead, and we need to really feel we are adding value. I think that horizon scanning and trend spotting is increasingly an important part of the role.

I think in terms of trends for us, we’re starting to look much more as a function on what we call the digital agenda, the use of technology, which isn’t just in terms of our business units, but it is also how we can operate more efficiently within Legal.

For example, in a few parts of the function, we’ve developed chat bots to deal with frequently asked questions, not necessarily just around legal advice, but things such as: ‘What’s in our policy on this matter? Who needs to sign this contract? What level of authority is required?’ We’re always trying to think of ways to reduce the need for a lawyer to spend any time on that.

TE: Innovation is at the heart of GSK. It’s our job as a company and, therefore, the legal function is also trying to innovate.

Sometimes, the innovation comes from the bottom, which, from my point of view is the best kind of innovation. In our LOCs, or local operating countries, the legal team are the people who know the daily operations best. Therefore, their innovations are generally much more efficient in terms of managing their daily workload. As leaders we are always listening to them, and we are always giving them a chance to present what they have found, what they have innovated, and then trying to make those tools available in other countries where appropriate.

As a real-life example, in Pakistan, which is one of my countries, a very junior lawyer, 24 years old, innovated a very simple contract management tool. We let her develop that tool and are now using it in 35 countries in emerging markets, which has given us a lot of savings, both in terms of working hours and, of course, financially.

GC: Looking at the wider industry in which GSK operates, what trends do you see currently taking place and on the horizon?

NF: I think the whole digital revolution is definitely changing. Pharmaceuticals is just as much impacted by that. New digital platforms, new ways of trading, e-commerce, digital innovation – obviously, all of that raises a host of legal issues.

Sometimes they’re the same issues that we’ve always had in old ways of working, but you need to understand the new world and new ways in order to identify them.

There are definitely trends around digital, data privacy, in the same way that all our business units are innovating, and finding new channels to reach patients and consumers. That’s one very general observation.

I think we are a highly regulated industry. We always have been. But the regulatory environment continues to get even tougher. I think compliance plays a huge part in what we do, and with that comes increasing regulatory scrutiny, inspections, and investigations. This type of lawyering is not just traditional contracting and counselling.

I think in our industry specifically, almost every market and every government is going to be preoccupied with the cost of healthcare and the increasing burden of ageing populations. A lot of regulation varies, with different mechanisms in different markets, but the pricing of pharmaceuticals, reimbursements to governments, public healthcare and access to medicine – issues like this are a hot topic.

GC: How would you characterise the mission of the legal team for the next five years?

NF: At GSK, we’ve gone through an evolution where we’re trying to be less and less a disparate bunch of functions with our own mission statement. We’re actually all trying to align much more around the corporate mission.

We want to help our business to be more competitive, so that’s definitely been a shift in our philosophy. But we want to be competitive in the right way, aligned to our values. We’re very focused on the GSK mission, which is around how we can best serve the needs of patients and consumers. We’re quite focused on our roles to support the business, but it’s really aligned to what GSK is trying to do, rather than having our own mission to be the best legal function in the industry, or whatever that might be.

TE: I agree. Another is the continuous development for our teams in the next five years. Most of the young lawyers working in the local operating countries today will be the leaders managing the legal function tomorrow. We’re focusing more on their development, focusing more on people and developing them better, so that we can usher in the future legal leaders of GSK.

PL: I would agree with all of that, and add that we want to be the best business partner guardian we can be. Then of course, you have to peel underneath that and say, ‘What does that mean?’ It’s understanding your business, being innovative, and supporting the business in terms of the agenda it has, both from a patient perspective, and from a business perspective.