Head of emerging markets legal Amol Prabhu leads the interaction of Barclays Investment Banking with its Barclays Africa franchise. This involves extensive co-ordination and collaboration with multiple legal teams comprising over 100 lawyers and operating in 14 countries across the African continent.

Working with Charles Wheeler (general counsel, Barclays Africa) and Lele Modise (general counsel, corporate and investment banking legal, Barclays Africa), Prabhu has developed an integrated legal coverage model which provides effective and efficient legal and reputational risk management on a cross product basis and innovative financing solutions for African clients on a local, regional and global basis, as well as non-African clients seeking to access the continent. The transactions that Prabhu’s team focuses on are often multi-product, multi-jurisdictional and multi-entity.

‘It is normal on such transactions to have legal teams in five locations across the globe all working together to achieve one common goal. It is therefore critical that the lawyers in these teams not only bring their own specialist skills to the table but work together as one efficient team and have a consistent understanding of the firm’s legal and risk appetite’, Prabhu explains.

‘Providing effective legal coverage only works when there is a strong culture in a legal function irrespective of where you may be based. That is why one of the key priorities in developing this coverage model was to encourage greater collaboration between legal teams, through regular cross jurisdictional calls and physical meetings, as well as enabling team members to benefit from regional and global secondments where they can truly obtain a deep understand of their colleagues across a global legal function’.