About

As a qualified tax consultant who formerly worked in tax for a number of years, Colin Fuller is well placed in his role as head of legal for Rabobank. Fuller explains that he left his rewarding career in tax to fulfil his passion for the commercial support side of legal business while still retaining his tax competency by joining Citibank as legal counsel. After practicing successfully here for some time, however, Fuller found he was ‘missing the transaction side’ of his day to day activities, which meant that the offer of a position with Rabobank made perfect sense when this was forthcoming. In the ten years since, Fuller has taken part in some truly cutting edge deals. ‘At Rabo’, he explains, ‘what I really enjoy is the innovative style of transactions that we do, which we often win awards for both in and outside of Ireland’. Fuller describes his leadership style at the helm of these projects as ‘hands on but informal’, and goes into how he ‘regularly sits down with the business in order to take ownership of projects in order to keep as much work in-house as possible’, to ensure he and the legal team have as much positive impact to Rabobank as possible. This is important to Fuller, as he believes that ‘as an in-house lawyer, you have to add value that an external lawyer cannot’. To do this, he explains, one should ‘understand your business and keep communication open with people – for instance, through keeping technical legal jargon to a minimum – and try to be flexible and minimise surprises’.