INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 1/3LY
IN CONVERSATION WITH MAARTEN SCHOLTEN 03
IN CONVERS AT ION WI TH MAART EN SCHOLT EN GENERAL COUNSEL , TOTAL S . A . Maarten Scholten, General Counsel at Total S.A. in conversation with David Leckie, Partner at Clyde & Co.
DAV ID Absolutely – I verymuch agree. Lawyers can often find themselves pigeon-holed early on in their career and unwilling to take the risk of amove, so this is very refreshing advice. I would like to ask you about your borderless career at Schlumberger. Having progressed from legal to finance and then to operations, your career is certainly unique. Fromyour early days as Legal Counsel at Schlumberger, you rose rapidly through the ranks of the legal department to become Global Director of Legal Services. You thenmoved away from the legal department to become Head of Finance before becoming President of Schlumberger Oilfield Services ECA (Europe, Africa and CIS), and then Director of Mergers &Acquisitions/Business Development. What would you saywere the highlights of this remarkable career? MAART EN One thing I’mquite proud of is having been instrumental in adapting the legal function to changing business imperatives in Schlumberger and, to an extent, in Total. It was really about making sure that, as the business grew globally and becamemore complex, with newproduct lines and activities, we were always thinking about howwe could best serve our internal clients, and ensuring that we kept the standards up, as wemoved towards being amore global legal function. For a lawyer, the opportunity to have a borderless career is extremely important. I explored this concept duringmy time at Schlumberger, where I ventured outside the boundaries of the law. It was a good experience, which complementedmy skill set as a lawyer. I think it can be very useful as a lawyer to be able to say that you’ve done some work in a finance department or as an operational manager. This shows that you have an enriched understanding of the business. So, for me the highlights of my career have beenmaking sure that, at certain times, I took steps into the unknown, which ultimately helped to strengthenmy core competencies.
T HE SECRE T T O SUC CE S S? A BORDERL E S S C A REER
DAV ID Maarten, you have had a remarkable, borderless career which began as a law student at the University of Amsterdam, led you to aMaster of Science in Politics from the Sorbonne in Paris and then to New York, with a Dutch law firm. Howdid you first become involvedwith the oil &gas industry? MAART EN It was a total coincidence! When I was a young lawyer working in New York, I was part of a very international teamand I met and socialisedwith lots of other young lawyers. A couple of my good friends had already been recruited by Schlumberger, whichwas headquartered in New York. They were extremely positive about life as an in-house Counsel and arranged for me tomeet the General Counsel of Schlumberger, who at that time was David Browning. Themeeting went very well but I didn’t think I was ready tomove in-house. At the time, I was focused on going back to Holland to spend a fewmore years workingmyway up the ranks in the law firm. However, my friends were quite persistent and kept on callingme until I finally said, “Okay, I’ve had enough of private practice, let’s go!” So, there was, in fact, no big plan to go in-house or to become an oil &gas lawyer. I just listened to friends and kept mymind open to new opportunities. The philosophy of my career has always been to take some risks and trust my instincts – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Risk-taking, in a calculatedmanner, is something that can really launch a career.
Made with FlippingBook Annual report