About

‘Generally, what is great about in-house work is that it is so much more tangible than private practice work,’ Valerie Tan says. She joined ABN AMRO in 2010 just after the bank had undergone a demerger and merger. ‘The legal team was pulled together post-financial crisis,’ she explains. ‘The initial task was to regroup the legal department, restart relationships with businesses and head office and set up a knowledgebase that had been lost to other institutions’. The fact that she was able to achieve all of this whilst maintaining and growing the team, Tan counts as a major achievement of her in-house career to date. Her small, senior-level team covers private banking, clearing bank, commercial banking and investment banking. On challenges, she says ‘the answer du jour is the flood of regulations’. She also feels aware of the constant need to keep legal relevant within the fast-moving environment of investment banking. ‘To be clear though, none of these challenges have made the work not fun or not possible’.