In three years, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan director and legal counsel Shikha Sethi has not only made a huge impact within the organisation, but for the landscape of European M&A investment regulation.
Sethi spearheaded a group of leading global investors with a combined €1trn of assets in an advocacy and lobbying campaign on the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation that came into effect last October. The resulting Foreign Subsidies Regulation lessens the administrative and financial burden on large global investors in the EU, including PE houses, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds.
An M&A lawyer by trade, Sethi took the leadership opportunity as a way to venture into new fields of law such as competition, state aid and foreign investment while forming connections that gave Ontario Teachers’ unprecedented access to a wealth of learnings from fellow institutional investors and asset managers.
Having moved in-house from Linklaters in 2021 following a secondment in 2020, she has kept close ties with her former firm who have supported Ontario Teachers’ in designing, building and implementing its current Foreign Subsidies Regulation information-gathering system. The success of the relationship has inspired Sethi to take the lead on educating investment partners on getting the most out of relationships with external law firms.
Sethi ultimately sees herself stepping into a general counsel role someday and is keen to continue broadening her skillset by creating opportunities to sharpen her skills in more areas of law she has yet to work in.