Name: ANNABEL MOORE

Company: DIAGEO

Position: General Counsel (APAC)

Tell us a bit about your career so far.

I started my legal career in London, working for a small legal practice that specialised in corporate finance work. This was in the late 1980s, a boom time in London for this type of work. It was great to start my career in a smaller environment where you had to lend a hand to all sorts of work, and you had to learn quickly. This firm was then acquired by a larger City law firm now known as Gowling WLG, where I worked until I was about four years qualified.

At that point, I decided I would like to further my career in-house. After a year with AT&T/NCR, I joined Guinness in London in late 1995, which merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to create Diageo.

I moved to Singapore in 1997 with Diageo to establish the APAC legal team, and I have been working here ever since. I recently celebrated 21 years with Diageo.

How is being an in-house lawyer in your current organisation different from that of other companies?

As the majority of my working life has been spent with Diageo, I can only gauge the differences based on conversations I have with fellow in-house lawyers when we share experiences about working life.

One thing that did strike me very early on in my time with Diageo was that lawyers here are very much part of the fabric of the company. We are not backroom lawyers, just there to provide isolated pieces of legal advice.

Instead, we have an important seat at the table, with our general counsel represented on the global executive team and senior lawyers represented on leadership teams across the world. We are expected to add value beyond our functional expertise and to contribute to wider strategic discussions.

What are some of the major recent trends in your industry? In what ways have you seen these change or affect your role?

In APAC, I can see two trends that have emerged clearly in the last few years. The first is the increasing focus on anticorruption regulation and enforcement. This was a topic familiar to those working in Europe or the U.S., but as the U.S. authorities began to bring enforcement actions against companies operating in this region, it triggered local governments to start taking more concerted efforts to enforce their national anticorruption laws.

The second trend is the growing importance of digital marketing and the move away from more traditional above-the-line campaigns. This has coincided with increasing regulation restricting the advertising of alcohol. This requires all of us to develop a detailed knowledge of local legislation to understand the do’s and don’ts in this area, including its application to digital media.

How many lawyers does your team consist of, and how does the structure work as a whole?

Globally, Diageo has approximately 150 lawyers. The legal team is spread across the globe, with lawyers based in all our major markets. In Asia Pacific, we have 34 lawyers who are based in the markets they support. We have a matrixed reporting structure that works well for us. Lawyers based in and supporting a particular market report to the general manager of that market, but they also have a strong dotted-line reporting relationship to me.

I report directly to the general counsel and have a strong dotted-line reporting relationship to the regional president of APAC.

We have had various reporting structures over the years, with a mixture of dotted-line and hardline arrangements. But one thing that I am sure of is that relationships are a great deal more important than the reporting lines on the organisation chart.

How would you describe your strategy for the legal team?

The strategy – or as we refer to it in Diageo, the ambition – for the legal function is established at a global level by the legal leadership team (of which I am a member) and is closely aligned to Diageo’s purpose of “becoming the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products company in the world.”

The global legal function contributes to Diageo’s ambition by providing proactive advice and support to underpin the company’s growth and reputation while supporting its standards of business conduct.

Day-to-day activities are driven by the commercial priorities of our 21 markets, with appropriate regard to mitigating risks as well as to maintaining and protecting Diageo’s reputation.

We bring to the business a distinct and valuable perspective that enables us to support Diageo’s growth while helping to ensure that the company is upholding its standards of business conduct. While the commercial imperatives may differ from market to market, the underlying philosophy remains consistent across the globe.

What would you say has been the proudest moment of your career so far?

It is extremely hard to choose one! On a day-to-day basis, I have immense pride in working for Diageo. From a personal perspective, I think my proudest moments come from the contributions that I have made to support the growth of Diageo in Asia Pacific.

In the 20 years that I have worked for Diageo in Singapore , I have been involved in some groundbreaking transactions for the company, including our acquisitions of Shui Jing Fang, a listed baiju company in China, and spirits giant United Spirits Limited in India.

I also take a huge amount of pride in the reputation of the legal function here in the region. I sometimes have to pinch myself when I think about how when I started in Singapore, I was the sole lawyer for the region.

Now, we have a team of over 30 extremely talented lawyers who are woven into the fabric of the organisation and work hard every day to support the continued growth of Diageo in Asia Pacific.

In your opinion, what are the key traits that make for a successful in-house lawyer?

We have recently updated our Legal Functional Performance Assessment tool to capture the traits and behaviours that we believe are most important for our lawyers to demonstrate.

We have identified six behaviours that we believe are critical for lawyers working at Diageo business partnership, solutions orientation, decision-making and judgment, workload management, drafting and accuracy and management of external lawyers.

In summary, we need our lawyers to be intrinsically involved in the day-to-day business and the emerging strategy, to have strong relationships in the business to ensure that their views are captured on all commercial issues.

We need our lawyers to think creatively to provide innovative solutions to legal problems and to make decisions that positively impact the business.

What is the best advice you have ever received?

I have received many pieces of sound advice over the years, and I keep reminding myselfof this one: “You have two ears and only one mouth.” It is sometimes too easy to jump into solution mode and to start using your mouth, even before you have fully understood all the relevant facts.

Another that has been particularly relevant to me as a working mother of four children is this: “You have to be in it to win it.” I have seen so many women relinquish their careers when they have children, and I find this so disheartening, particularly when you consider the years that they have spent pursuing their careers.

I have found that it’s possible to be a mother and hold down a demanding job, and this is so incredibly rewarding. But my advice to women who are struggling with conflicting demands is twofold. 

First, invest in fantastic childcare. If the cost at the beginning seems disproportionate to your salary, think of it as an investment in your future career. Second, get your partner to take on more responsibilities at home.