Establishment Thailand & Asia Export Markets General Counsel

Job Title: Establishment Thailand & Asia Export Markets General Counsel
Location: Thailand

Company Overview:

Unilever Ice Cream is the largest global Ice Cream Company in the world, with over 100 years of experience delivering a diverse range of indulgent, yet responsible, craft food experiences and treats delighting consumers. Committed to innovation, quality, and sustainability we have 35 brands, including 3 one billion Euro brands (Magnum, Wall’s, Ben & Jerry’s), a strong presence in over 60 countries, generating annual revenue of over $8 billion.

As part of our growth strategy, we are seeking a dynamic talent with strong expertise in managing large scale legal transformation to join us as the Ice Cream Establishment Program Legal Lead.

Job Summary:

Are you a senior lawyer (+12 years’ experience) passionate about intellectual property, legal marketing, and regulatory compliance in a constantly evolving world? Would you like to be part of a multi-cultural global legal team, ensuring that our business adheres to IP laws and marketing regulations while providing expert counsel on legal matters in the ASIA region? Then this role is tailored for you.

This role will be part of the Legal Establishment team that will drive the set-up, standalone design and implementation of all legal required structure and capabilities to enable Unilever’s Ice Cream business to become a fully functioning standalone company, separate from Unilever. The roles in the Legal Establishment team will sit with the Ice Cream business and will work closely with the Unilever Separation team. 

This role will support the legal lead the establishment team to design an end-to-end Legal function for this standalone company. This will require collaboration with business leaders, coordination across different functional and BU workstreams and overall set up of a future-fit Legal function for the standalone Ice Cream organization.

The successful candidate will be one that has deep Legal functional expertise in his/her area with proven record of leading large-scale people transformation and has a passion for change management, simplification, communication, and a desire to make a meaningful impact.

This role will exist in its current form for ~12-15 months. We expect the separation process to have been concluded in this period with post-separation governance established.

Key Responsibilities:

This role will be the Legal Lead for the successful enablement of a standalone Ice Cream company for Thailand & Asia Export Markets. The role will be part of a dedicated, multi-disciplinary team led by the Ice Cream Asia Establishment Lead.

• Responsible for the diligence, planning and execution of all legal and regulatory establishment activities in the region (e.g., set-up of new legal entities, transfer of local agreements, application / transfer of key licenses and registerations etc.)

• Coordinate with Global Legal & Regulatory PMO Lead to plan for regional separation and provide regular updates about progress, risks and issues; serve as key point of contact for local in-country legal & regulatory leads

• Provide input into key legal and regulatory requirements for country profiles, timelines and workplans

• Develop and manage regional legal and regulatory establishment workplan

• Manage and track cross-functional interdependencies

Key deliverables:

• List of legal and regulatory requirements for Thailand and Asia Export Markets

• Regular updates (progress, risks, issues) related to legal and regulatory establishment activities.

• Legal and regulatory inputs for country diligence (country profiles, country timelines, country workplans).

• Detailed legal and regulatory separation workplan (including key milestones, activities, owners, timelines etc.).

• List of cross-functional interdependencies.

Experience and Qualifications:

The preferred candidate would have 12+ years of Legal experience with following key skills:

• Systemic and strategic thinking: Being able to consider longer term implications for the business, elevating the conversation to business, society, and ecosystems. A deep understanding of the business and levers to pull, engaging others to prioritise and pursue opportunities that deliver significant growth for Unilever and have a positive impact on the world. 

• Owner’s mindset: Using financial acumen, data, and insights to inform their thinking that both makes the complex simple for others, creating a sense of urgency with a business edge and can show how those insights have created impact and delivered business value.

• Functional, Business and Commercial Acumen: Understanding of various business and functional models, industry dynamics, and market trends is crucial, combined with a deep understanding of how Unilever serves consumers and correlatedly creating a Legal function poised to create a sustainable competitive and effective operation.

• Change Leadership and Communication prowess. Leading and landing transformative change, comfortable experimenting with new approaches, pushing themselves and others to achieve outstanding outcomes. Crafting communication narrative that is inspiring and compelling to drive change.

• Organizational Design Expertise: Experience and proficiency in designing organizational structures, roles, and processes that facilitate efficiency, collaboration, and adaptability. This includes considerations like hierarchy, communication channels, and workflow optimization.

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.