Katia Santis has a long-standing in-house career having taken up the position of internal legal adviser with the Cyprus Development Bank (CDBbank) in 1991. She spent 22 years there working on major projects, such as CDBbank’s privatisation in 2008, gaining more and more responsibility in the process. She left the Bank in 2013 having worked her way up to head of legal unit (banking division), manager of the recoveries department and head of the loans administration department, all in parallel.

After a short spell as senior recoveries officer at Piraeus Bank Cyprus (now AstroBank), Santis joined the Bank of Cyprus (BOC) Group in 2014 as the chief legal officer and was subsequently also appointed company secretary in the same year. In just under four years with the company, she has achieved a number of milestones, especially with regard to the Bank’s legal department. Faced with a centralised legal department, Santis restructured it to achieve greater efficiencies splitting it into teams that support specific business lines. To this end, a tailored automated system was implemented to delegate work to the appropriate counsel, an ‘‘open door’’ policy for ad hoc advice and guidance was adopted and bespoke instructions were circulated to all BOC staff on how to use the department.

In addition to the changes she implemented in the legal team, Santis explains how she has also been involved in a number of important litigations over the last three years including ‘an international arbitration at the ICC in London in which the bank was involved and which evolved around the resolution law and the decrees that were issued under it and how these were implemented with respect to particular issues’. This was settled successfully thanks in no small part to Santis’ expertise, as the ‘tribunal found in favour of the bank’. Regarding transactions, Santis says the ‘the most important transaction I have been involved in is the listing of the bank’s holding company on the London Stock Exchange in 2016-2017. Other important transactions in the last three years centre on the alignment of the bank with ever-changing regulations such as the drafting of all necessary documentation as a result of MiFID II, PSD II or the GDPR’. She also had the following to say about BOC’s unique position: ‘The Bank of Cyprus is the first European banking institution that has been bailed – in. This is an unprecedented experience and challenge especially in terms of the litigation against the Bank that has arisen as a result and the defence of the Bank before the courts. Precedence is being created in Cyprus in this sense and this is primarily why one needs to be responsible and particularly diligent in how these matters are being dealt with’.

Before embarking on her in-house journey in 1991, Santis was a barrister with P.L. Cacoyannis and Co Law Firm. She is currently a member of the Cyprus Bar and the Bar of England and Wales.