Founded in 1916, Piraeus Bank has grown into Greece’s leading bank with approximately 17,000 employees and operations in seven countries serving just under six million customers. Among its taskforce is the vastly experienced and highly regarded group general counsel George Liakopoulos who has been with the financial services company since 2000.

Piraeus Bank made a series of strategic acquisitions and mergers aiming to establish a strong presence in the domestic and regional market in the last 20 years, all of which Liakopoulos has been heavily involved with. Some of the company’s landmark transactions that Liakopoulos has worked on include the 2005 acquisitions of the Bulgarian Eurobank (now Piraeus Βank Bulgaria) and Serbian Atlas Bank (now Piraeus Bank Beograd) and the 2007 acquisitions of the Ukrainian International Commerce Bank (now Piraeus Bank ICB) as well as the establishment of Astrobank in Cyprus following the acquisition of the Arab Bank Cypriot network.

Liakopoulos is also commended for his work in guiding the Bank from a legal perspective during the global financial crash in the late 2000s as well as more recently with an official source stating, ‘during the past years he has successfully met legal and regulatory challenges imposed on financial institutions by the relentless Greek financial crisis’. He also recently spearheaded the Piraeus teams during the company’s 2012-2013 consolidation phase where they completed six transactions in 10 months in addition to coordinating complex legal work for the Bank’s recapitalisation efforts between 2013 and 2015.

In having responsibility over for all financial institutions in the Piraeus Bank group, Liakopoulos manages a large legal department with 410 in-house lawyers in Greece and 58 lawyers across its international subsidiaries. He is also recognised for his efforts in maintaining good relations with international regulators and authorities and having the oversight for the corporate governance function for all financial institutions in the Group. Prior to joining Piraeus Bank, Liakopoulos had a successful private practice career working on major infrastructure and oil exploration projects. He often speaks at legal and financial conferences and is a member of the legal council at the Hellenic Banking Association, the editorial committee of the Greek banking and securities law review and the advisory board of global leaders in law as well as a board member in the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Europe.