Bio 

Gemma Casademunt Serra is a highly experienced legal advisor specialising in commercial, corporate, business, and financial law, with over twenty years of expertise. She has successfully built and led legal teams across multiple jurisdictions, including Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Poland, the UK, and Morocco. Her work focuses on mitigating legal and regulatory risks, facilitating international business expansion, and managing cross-border projects in complex regulatory environments.  

Currently, Gemma serves as the Head of International Branches’ Legal Department at CaixaBank, SA, where she leads a team of international lawyers overseeing the legal and regulatory aspects of the bank’s international branches. She provides strategic legal counsel across various business units, covering product development, sales, risk management, operations, compliance, governance, privacy (GDPR), and regulatory matters. She plays a crucial role in regulatory monitoring across multiple jurisdictions and ensures that the bank’s international business units maintain a strong legal and regulatory framework.  

Prior to her current role, she was the Head of Business Legal Department at CaixaBank, where she provided legal advice on corporate finance, structured finance, M&A, real estate, trade finance, payments, and insolvency matters. She also handled litigation, managed external advisors, and led legal support for business-oriented clients. Earlier in her career at CaixaBank, she held senior legal positions, focusing on customer service complaints, dispute resolution, and regulatory compliance.  

Beyond her corporate legal career, Gemma has contributed to academia as an Associate Professor of Commercial and Corporate Law at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili’s UB law catedra framework, as well as a Collaborator Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University’s employee training, where she trained CaixaBank employees in insolvency law.  

Her academic credentials include a Law Degree from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, a master’s in international business law from ESADE, and various specialised certifications in financial statement analysis, real estate credit law, digital transformation, and neuro communication. She is also a certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and an NLP Coach, further strengthening her leadership and negotiation skills.  

With a wealth of experience in banking, corporate governance, regulatory compliance, and international legal advisory, Gemma continues to be a key figure in the legal landscape, ensuring businesses navigate legal complexities with confidence and strategic foresight. 

Q&A 

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?  

The International Branches’s Legal Department at CaixaBank is responsible for managing the legal and regulatory risks of the bank, continuously providing strategic advice. In times of instability or crisis, it strives to fulfil its role to the best of its ability, ensuring the company’s resilience.  

Its contribution is especially critical in such moments, as it delivers solid, well-founded assessments that enhance stability within the organisation – shielding it from external uncertainties. At the same time, it simplifies complexities, as these situations often bring heightened challenges. Its priority is to present a clear and actionable plan, outlining risks and enabling the company to take well-informed steps toward resolution.  

While taking risks is sometimes necessary, it is crucial that every decision is grounded in thorough assessment and strategic planning to safeguard the company’s long-term success.

What are the main cases or transactions that you have been involved in recently?   

The team is honoured to oversee legal and regulatory matters across all operations, including our international branches. This responsibility allows us to take a broader, more strategic approach to the legal aspects of the business.  

From this perspective, the team has been actively collaborating with its partners on the financing of major supply chain platforms across multiple jurisdictions. This work has been both highly engaging and challenging. Additionally, we ensure compliance with regulatory and legal requirements in project and asset financing, including large-scale deals with major corporations.  

The team has also been driving the implementation of new digitalisation initiatives to enhance the bank’s service offering, improve user experience, and expand the range of solutions available to customers.  

Over the past year, the team has been deeply involved in these projects while also navigating the evolving European regulatory landscape, particularly in areas such as instant payments, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and GDPR updates.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation? 

On this front, the team has been actively supporting the bank in implementing new ESG initiatives across various projects. This has been a continuous process, which has been evolving and improving each year. 

The bank is highly committed to staying at the forefront of ESG matters, providing the necessary support and resources to drive these efforts forward. We are fortunate to work alongside teams that are deeply dedicated to ESG, and as the legal team, we take great pride in contributing to this important mission.

What do you see as the major legal challenges for businesses in Spain over the next five years, and how are you preparing to address them?  

One fact everyone in the banking sector must eventually face is that this is a highly regulated industry. From a legal perspective, the legal department is prepared to provide guidance with a strong legal mindset. The constant pressure to comply with regulations and external oversight requires it to establish a strong first line of defence of the legal and regulatory risk. Gaining control over the bank’s activities, identifying risks, monitoring them, implementing controls and mitigating measures and ensuring proper reporting is an ongoing challenge for our team. 

Another major challenge is the rapid advancement of technology and digitalisation. Although this shift began some time ago, it has now gained full momentum, making its integration into our daily operations a necessity. There are many innovative products on the market, but their implementation must align with regulatory requirements – an area that remains sometimes unclear. We must be particularly cautious with banking secrecy, data protection, operational resilience, among other legal considerations. Ultimately, adapting to this evolving digital landscape while advising on compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements is a significant challenge for us.