Suparerk Auychai has been appointed as Allen & Overy’s managing partner for Bangkok, effective November 1, 2021. He is taking over from Stephen Jaggs, who has held the position for two consecutive terms since 2013, and will remain as head of the firm’s banking and projects practice in Bangkok. Thai-law qualified, Auychai specializes in M&A, capital markets, corporate finance and securities-related law, and has more than 25 years of experience advising clients in Thailand. “Having been with Allen & Overy since 2007, I have seen the office go from strength to strength. We have built a market-leading practice advising international companies investing in Thailand, and a growing number of Thai companies on their cross-border transactions. I look forward to leading a diverse, high-performing team that not only works hard to innovate for our clients, but also works equally hard in supporting our local NGO clients through our pro bono efforts,” said Auychai. Jaggs added, “since opening our Bangkok office 23 years ago, we now have over 65 staff, including 35 lawyers covering banking, projects, corporate and capital markets, many of whom are dual qualified. Our Bangkok office is an integral part of our wider ASEAN network, and has become a hub for our work across Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia advising on market-leading transactions. I’m excited for Auychai to build on what has been a very successful growth trajectory for the Bangkok office over the last two...

As a banking lawyer of rather too many years, and having seen the light and moved into the exciting world of ‘new law’ a few years ago, I recognized that these two seemingly distinct worlds could collide and generate new solutions for our clients. My early consulting work focused heavily on the in-house operating models of global banks. Unsurprisingly, much in-house resource was focused on enabling transactional work. However, consistent themes emerged: private practice mentality, unarticulated risk appetite, lack of clarity on instructing and working with external lawyers, silos – inconsistency between teams; inconsistency between business lines; inconsistency between products; inconsistency between locations, limited deployment of technology, senior teams in expensive locations etc. While these teams were deemed front line business critical and not the natural contenders for change it was clear that improvements in the model would yield significant efficiency gains. We have seen changes emerging in the market often centered around the establishment of transaction negotiation functions potentially alongside a level of automation, most often developed in-house but less often considered candidates for external management/ outsourcing, unlike less core lower value commercial contracts work or specific simple contract types such as NDAs. However, driven by increasing focus on cost and a pro-active approach to risk, we are seeing transformation initiatives in transactional banking accelerate and other models emerge. These models often involve partnering with an external provider to deliver an end-to-end transaction solution and can provide a number of benefits, including: a scalable solution that may develop from a proof of concept around a particular loan type but then deliver value by incorporating quickly further loan types...