About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?

The team consists of five attorneys, one corporate secretary and two support staff. The legal team supports the entire Deutsche Bank platform in India, i.e. the bank along with its 11 group entities in India. The legal team is aligned in terms of the support they provide to the various businesses of the bank and its group entities. The legal team inter alia supports litigation and regulatory, corporate finance, transaction banking and trade finance, custody services, wealth management, retail, corporate finance and the corporate and investment banking businesses, which include fixed income, currencies and rates, equities, equity and debt capital markets and M&A advisory. Whilst the thrust is to undertake maximum work in-house, the dependency on external counsel is restricted to litigation, structured trades, expert legal opinions and other complex transactions.

Anjallee Paatil heads the India legal team, overseeing the in-house legal function overall. She has been with the bank for 12 years. The team of Shibani Rao, Swagata Bhattacharya and Sudarshana Ghosh oversee the legal function for the corporate and investment banking businesses. Amrita Ganguli is responsible for supporting the corporate bank (being custody, trade finance and cash management businesses) and Rohit Gupte oversees the corporate secretariat function for 10 legal entities within the Deutsche Bank India franchise.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years?

Some of the noteworthy ones are: •The sale of the asset management business to Pramerica Mutual Fund, •An export credit agency (ECA) guarantee backed structured AR purchase, •On the equity capital market side, the legal team has facilitated some large IPOs for leading Indian corporate names, •On the debt capital markets side, some of the largest bond issuances in India including Greenko, Tata Steel, ICICI, SBI, Bank of India, JSW and iGate, among others, •Regarding M&A advisory: Videocon d2h, Infosys, ONGC, Indian Oil, GMR-Kia, •Distressed debt financing, •Priority financing for GVK.

What recent political, economic or regulatory changes in India have impacted your company and the team the most?

India has an ever-changing regulatory landscape. The regulatory changes that have impacted our businesses include ongoing changes in the insolvency regime including on the regulatory and legislative side, the introduction of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act in 2016, among other things. The political climate has an ongoing impact on our equities business. In terms of economic changes, we have seen a significant influx of inbound foreign investment in various sectors, including in the healthcare, real estate, technology and manufacturing sectors over the past couple of years, which have proportionately resulted in a solid transaction pipeline in the last 18-24 months. On the global front, regulations having extra-territorial impact continue to apply to all our branches, due to which the team is closely involved on the regulatory front, providing legal and regulatory advice for complying with these regulations within the Indian regulatory landscape and engaging with regulators and to the extent necessary, the Ministry of Finance in India, especially in the realm of capital regulations and netting.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how does the team intend to assist with this?

As you might have already seen in the media, we are undertaking a fundamental transformation of the bank globally aimed at making us a stronger, simpler and more profitable organisation. While in India we expect it to be business as usual for the most part, the legal team on the ground is very leanly staffed and continues to see an inflow of a significant number of transactions and a very healthy deal pipeline for the upcoming year.

How has the team harnessed technology to improve output or drive efficiencies?

Technology is the backbone of the team. Among using cutting-edge technologies for document management, the legal team has an in-house cost management system for closely monitoring legal spends and obtaining quotations, with all of the legal mandates being routed through this system. The system is also enabled to make payments for legal spends directly through the software deployed. In terms of reducing paperwork, Deutsche Bank has developed electronic trading systems which supports electronic confirmation of documentation between the bank and its clients for various transactions and product types. Deutsche Bank also has a revolutionary digital platform called eVault, which offers a secure repository for the secure exchange of documents.

The legal team is closely involved in addressing any legal issues including with respect to data privacy and Indian law related considerations as applicable. The legal and the regulatory landscape is changing rapidly and that casts a need on in-house lawyers to be abreast with the changes and guide the organisation appropriately. The first port of call for all legal and certain regulatory issues being the legal function, it is essential that the legal team provides the right support and advice.

Can you sum up the team culture/ethos? Giving some information afterwards about how this is developed.

The legal team consists of extremely driven, smart, dedicated and goal oriented people with a “can do” attitude. While individual members of the legal team may support different businesses, it’s a “one team” approach built on a foundation of transparency, clarity of communication and the highest standards of integrity. The team has evolved over time, with long timers being provided with appropriate growth opportunities, being honed internally to take on positions of leadership over the years. The senior lawyers are like minded individuals who have joined the bank from a mix of external law firms and in-house teams at other foreign banks in India, with a strong work ethic.