Standard Chartered’s Africa legal team has responsibility for 15 jurisdictions and offers transactional support across the region, including in jurisdictions where the bank has no on-the-ground lawyers. The team forms part of the regional legal team, led by Karl Rogers as general counsel for Africa and the Middle East. The team is recognised for delivering outstanding service to the business and for allowing the bank to operate seamlessly.

As one senior lawyer from the team comments, the Africa legal team ‘advises on transactional matters and legal and regulatory hurdles in a sometimes challenging region and is proactive and client-focused. The team works together with [business units] as partners looking for innovative ways to both meet our clients’ requirements and to solve problems facing our businesses’.

The legal team is ‘typically heavily involved in transactional matters, product roll out issues, restructuring matters and reputational matters across the region and at senior levels are viewed as close partners of [Standard Chartered’s] key business management’. Working against a continuously evolving national and international regulatory and legislative landscape, the team has taken a key strategic lead with respect to implementing extraterritorial legislation such as Article 55 of the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive.

It has also reviewed and commented on various pieces of far-reaching Africa-originated legislation in Kenya, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and South Africa and the Africa-wide Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities V (“UCITS V”) directives impacting the securities services business of the bank’s entities and operations across the region. In addition to advising on a number of high-value transactions and leading extensive training programmes with both legal and non-legal staff, Standard Chartered’s Africa legal team has represented the bank on key industry bodies in African jurisdictions as well as at international industry groups with an African focus.