What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

I am not sure I believe in any ‘number one’ challenge one needs to resolve in order to consider a given year successful. It is not that I have not faced multiple challenges during my 25 years in the legal industry. I joined Marguerite 13 years ago from an American law firm as one of the first few people on board. Since then, I have seen the entire Marguerite organisation mature and have been part of the growth process myself. We have grown from being a new fund manager nobody had heard of in 2010 to being one of the most active infrastructure fund managers managing greenfield infrastructure assets. The market itself has changed significantly, from being a niche sector to a fairly mainstream one with many established managers expanding into infra funds. The regulatory developments, both at the infrastructure projects and industry-wide compliance levels, have been incredibly significant as well.

Do you have an example of a time when you have come up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works that did not result in a large expense?

In my experience, successful improvement is best attained through an aggregate of smaller changes and objectives rather than one major overhaul. Standardising certain key provisions across various investments funded from different sources and serviced by multiple investment teams did, and perhaps rightfully so, seem like a major task. However, preparing simple tools to keep at hand, like a standard template with the basic clauses we require on any deal, accompanied by a much larger database of precedent clauses addressing our various and more specific needs, makes the job much more time- and cost-efficient. Especially in the last year, I was proud to have contributed to multiple Marguerite transactions in a timely manner while heavily occupied with the set-up process of our latest fund. Throughout these fund negotiations, I was still able to find time to participate in the legal working group of Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association to provide a GP view on upcoming legislative changes.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

I believe the key qualities needed for success are organisational skills and the ability to make coherent decisions based on effective risk assessment. You should also be keen to develop an understanding of the commercial aspects of the business and be efficient in both your internal and external communications.