About

‘We are living in a challenging period, but also a very interesting evolution, where due to all these new constraints we have to reinvent our function and our way of working’. Laurent Durand, associate general counsel at HSBC France, sees a positive light in the gloomy environment of the banking industry. Durand supports the global banking and market activities of HSBC, with a focus on markets, businesses and advisory activities such as mergers and acquisitions and securitisation. He heads a team of 10 lawyers who report directly into him: ‘As manager my principal effort is to help lawyers of the team to be resilient to the deep transformation of the banking industry which we have had to face since the Lehman crisis. One of his many achievements include the ‘first ever senior secured corporate bonds listed in France, which are at the crossroad of several areas of law such as real estate, financing, bonds and markets’. The challenges in banking are what Durand finds most interesting, a very robust background in finance allows him to navigate under several levels of complex law (national, regional and cross border) and envisage creative solutions to each new product, transaction or organisation. He is also the president of the legal committee at the French Association of the Financial Services (AMAFI) and a member of numerous working groups within the financial sector.