Shell appoints new legal director

Royal Dutch Shell has appointed Donny Ching as its new legal director with immediate effect. Former-barrister Ching has been based in Rijswijk in the Netherlands as general counsel for Shell’s project and technology group, which provides technical support in upstream and downstream work and is also responsible for leading Shell’s safety, environment and contracting and procurement activities, since 2011. He will be relocating to The Hague as part of his new role. Ching joined Shell in 1988 in Australia. He requalified as a lawyer the following year and worked in the company’s resources business before moving on to downstream and corporate work. Since then he has held positions in Hong Kong, London, Qatar and Singapore, where he became head of legal in 2008 with responsibility for supporting to the downstream business in South-East Asia. The appointment comes exactly a month after the shock departure of legal director Peter Rees QC.