About

As the fourth-largest global reinsurer in the world, SCOR’s Paris-based group legal department, led by group general counsel Maï Novello, is structured to provide day-to-day support and innovative legal solutions to the Group and Business functions worldwide on a variety of practice areas spanning corporate, governance, regulatory, M&A and private equity and venture capital, contracts, IP-IT and litigation. This well-functioning team is organised, under Novello’s supervision, into two sub-teams dedicated to corporate governance and legal corporate finance and M&A, led by the extremely capable senior lawyers Isabel Keller and Nicolas Mathieu respectively. ‘The purpose of this organisation is for each legal counsel to build expert knowledge and be tactically focused on the specific needs of their internal clients, whether in the c-Room or at operational level’, Novello says. Team spirit is extremely high, allowing the team to go above and beyond in support of the company’s objectives. ‘Each lawyer shares the idea that in-house counsel should not only be pragmatic and efficient business partners and high-standard technical experts, but also paragons of virtue and guardians of the corporation’s financial and reputational interest. By anticipating and preventing legal and regulatory issues, and thanks to their strong knowledge of SCOR’s operating environment and strategy, the team helps the group achieve its business strategy in a constantly changing environment’, Novello explains. This has allowed the team to take the lead on certain critical SCOR projects, including notable M&A projects, litigations, innovative financial instruments issuances, complex corporate restructurings and increasing regulatory matters – ample evidence of the team’s varied skillset. Novello concludes by discussing the in-house team of the future, and what it must do to continue to drive success in its business: ‘In-house counsel are no longer seen as mere support functions but are consulted with at the very preliminary steps of strategic moves of the organisation as integral stakeholders of its vision and strategy, which is a trend that is going to increase in future. Their ability to anticipate and adapt to more and more stringent requirements of data protection, social and environmental issues and corporate transparency issues – to name just a few – will be core to driving their organisations forward’. Praise from nominating sources was also high. ‘The SCOR legal department is definitively one of the best in-house legal teams of the French market’, one said. ‘They are skilled and experienced, and most of them have spent numerous years in highly reputed French law firms’. Another nominator continued the theme: ‘I worked with the legal team at SCOR as their external advisor on their debut Tier 1 bond issuance. It was a complex transaction and the first of its kind in France. The legal team at SCOR understood all the issues perfectly and had the breadth of expertise and dedication to be at the forefront of structuring and negotiation’.