Interview with Salomon Vaie

Business risk relates to non-market variables. Lawyers are the professionals who are best equipped to solve this type of risk. As GCs we need to be brave and embrace our career as management professionals as opposed to black-letter lawyers.

I manage the six pillars of legal governance matters in the business: (1) legal contracts; (2) litigation; (3) intellectual property; (4) mergers and acquisitions; (5) company secretary and minority shareholders; and (6) licences and permits. Throughout my time with AB InBev, I have seen it transition from a family-run business to a major corporate. Successive owners of the business have had a huge influence on the way that the legal team is structured and there has been a shift in risk management.

We set clear targets at the beginning of each year for the legal teams in each jurisdiction. The 150 lawyers forming part of the team at AB InBev must deliver upon those targets by the end of the year. If the members of the team are not agile in the way they do things, and if they are unable to make decisions rapidly based on the information available, they will not meet their targets. The targets we set require our in-house lawyers to be very practical.

My leadership style seeks to motivate the team by promoting autonomy and setting challenges. I know that AB InBev will not be a good fit for everyone. We have a diverse team, spread across a range of generations and levels of experience. We empower our more junior employees with great responsibility, and we expect them to deliver on the challenges set. At AB InBev, we set the bar very high from the outset because we consider that if you do not really challenge yourself, you will never be motivated to meet the level expected.

We offer people career paths, not empty promises.

I set progression within the team by giving individuals an aspiration to evolve from working in a regional team doing corporate / commercial work, to moving to a role with more responsibility and eventually spending time in our centralised team in Mexico. The legal team in Mexico is intended to be an in-house law firm which is capable of dealing with complex legal issues that arise within the company. By having a clear career path, we are able to keep people engaged in the company. What differentiates AB InBev from other companies is that when it comes to career progression, if someone has the knowledge, correct attitude, have proven themselves, and we believe they have the potential to lead a legal team, we hire them.

I expect our in-house counsel to be sympathetic with the needs of the business, to be able to ‘jump into the water’ with the business, and to understand the problems and issues arising from the business taking on risk.

Some businesses do not require or want GCs to operate at a strategic level. My approach is to be flexible depending on the sophistication of the team that I am dealing with. Some GCs in other businesses gain influence and power by inundating managers with warnings which leads to management seeking approval for even the most minor decisions. This is not our approach. We do not want to be the main influencer on the business. The more positive input we can provide to strategic decisions of the company, the better. Our team does not want to be viewed by other parts of the company as the “owner” of the business.

As lawyers and GCs, we need to have the ambition of reaching general management positions.

The skills we develop to manage problems are critical to any modern business. There are many challenges to the survival of the business, whether it is union, ethical, and confidentiality issues, as well as other external variables. Lawyers have skills which provide them with an opportunity to contribute to the management of businesses that other professionals have not had the opportunity to develop, this can be of great value to the business.