Focus On… My role

The role of legal advisor within a financial group which includes institutional bodies demands specific knowledge in the fields of insurance, pensions, provident funds, and the capital market. I possess experience in the representation of the company before regulatory authorities and financial institutions in relation to day-to-day activity and also complex transactions. The group owns institutional bodies that are central players in the Israeli capital market and are involved, among other things, in a wide variety of complex transactions within the Israeli market. The legal team provides services concerning public offerings and capital raising in the Israeli capital market, and have acquired extensive experience regarding the handling of various extents of public offerings, commercial agreements, and professional expertise regarding complex issues of corporate law, insurance law and securities law.

Clal Insurance is an institutional body that manages public assets in the amount of approximately NIS300bn, and therefore its legal advice involves an in-depth knowledge of the capital market as well as strict corporate governance rules and multiple regulators.

In addition, the group is the first and only institutional body in the Israeli economy, which is a company without a controlling owner, and therefore the legal advice involves complex issues relevant to the unique situation in many aspects, including corporate governance, shareholders, and regulators

I also advise the company on corporate governance aspects, the work of the board of directors and its committees including the implementation of corporate governance processes. I am also involved in representing the company in class actions regarding securities, and insurance protection.

Furthermore, the insurance company naturally engages, as part of its on-going business, in legal proceedings with various parties. My primary task in this context focuses on dealing with a large number of requests to approve a wide range of class action suits, which are primarily consumer suits or securities class action suits against the company.

The employees of the legal department are subordinate to the chief legal advisor, while the structure of the legal department reflects the organisational structure of the group as a whole, so that each division has a designated legal advisor who manages the on-going work interface with the division and its leader. This organisational structure allows a direct connection between the designated legal advisor and the division in a way that allows the legal advisor to be integrated into the division and its business goals, and is subordinate to the chief legal consultancy in a way that allows synergy with the staff and supervision units. Throughout the years of my work, I have found that this way of working is an efficient tool that weaves the legal consultancy into the business units of the organisation in an optimal way for all those involved and today I am proud of the organisation’s conception of the legal department as a professional body that aids in achieving the business goals of the group.

An internal legal advisor must deal with a wide variety of business issues over a long period of time and, therefore, must have an understanding of a wide range of legal fields beyond the specific field that is dealt with by the company he works for. Beyond the scope of knowledge that is required, an internal legal advisor is judged by his ability to work with a wide variety of interfaces at different levels and with a wide spectrum of parties (employees, managers, directors, shareholders, and regulators).