Boasting north of 20 years of in-house banking experience, Henk Crouse joined HSBC to establish a South African presence, and has successfully achieved this task by forging a compact and nimble legal operation that ensures full compliance with local market requirements.

Possessing exceptional technical knowledge, combined with common sense and superior leadership skills, Crouse has navigated HSBC through a period of rapid growth in the last several years, ensuring adequate handling of all legal risks and proactively partnering with the business to help it achieve its objectives.

Despite facing a substantial workload during this period, Crouse’s team has been ranked as one of the top three in-house departments within the group for several years in a row. Areas of substantial praise from nominators in this year’s research include Crouse’s financial risk and investment banking expertise. He also receives mentions for his previous work at Nedbank, where he established the legal function for the bank’s retail area.