Moving in-house at an early stage in her professional career and joining a team at a relatively turbulent time, Andrea Moundi Savvides has been able to develop as a professional rapidly by attaining meaningful experience that would have taken longer to obtain by working in private practice. Shortly after her arrival to the leading online broker FxPro, Moundi had to deal with a challenging situation resulting from the recent Swiss franc black swan event, as well as subsequent departures from the legal team.

‘I was required to immediately assume more responsibilities, adapt to a dynamic industry continuously blitzed by stricter regulations, opine on matters that were not always exclusively legal in nature whilst constantly performing at a level where excellence is expected’, Moundi says. For the past several years, Moundi has handled the full range of issues that an in-house lawyer can come across: ‘Matters I have advised on, range from reviewing and participating in high profile sponsorship deals (currently, FxPro is the main sponsor of English football club Watford FC), to dealing with any regulatory or other ad-hoc matters.

Further, working as part of a group of companies, the entities of which are regulated in several jurisdictions, has provided me with an insight on regulations on a cross-border basis’. Significant achievements during Moundi’s career at FxPro also include her active and frontline involvement in a complex restructuring transaction worth $40m. ‘However, I believe that the highlight of my in-house experience thus far, has been my direct involvement in a corporate transaction that was valued at $800m and lasted well over a year’, Moundi states. ‘Even though the transaction did not materialise, all stages of the transaction reached maturity, providing me with all the exposure and experience I could have gained through my involvement in such a large-scale transaction, especially due to my involvement under the hat of an in-house lawyer’.

One of the most significant changes implemented, not only to the workings of the legal and compliance department, but to the organisation as a whole, has been Moundi’s achievement to embed compliance into the every-day workflow of the various departments. She says: ‘in my opinion, increasing the staff training to educate employees on various regulatory matters was extremely important in cultivating employees who are equipped to take business decisions without exposing the company to legal risk and simultaneously fulfilling the business aspirations of the organisation’.