About

After a rewarding private practice career, Ian McLaughlin moved into the Corporate and Treasury in-house team at Bank of Ireland, a position he recalls fondly as ‘a really good role with prominent transactions and a lot of face to face time with senior bank executives’. In 2014, and now equipped with an excellent capital markets legal skillset as well as highly valuable experience of top level in-house legal work, he moved to NBC Global Finance (NBCGF), the then newly established Irish subsidiary of National Bank of Canada. McLaughlin points out how his role has been a highly positive one both in terms of enjoyment and broadening his skillset. ‘The skills I developed at Bank of Ireland on the transactional, regulatory and compliance side are very useful here, particularly as NBCGF’s parent company is a non-EEA bank so much of what the team has done here represented a ground-up exercise; it is rewarding to have made a contribution to a start-up equity finance business, taking a leading role in the MiFID authorisation process and establishing trading support, corporate governance and regulatory compliance frameworks. As well as this, I am surrounded by very talented people; we have to accomplish business objectives together and fostering good working relations with people is essential’, explains McLaughlin. In terms of finding the right people to bring into his team, McLaughlin highlights that: ‘You have to learn and understand the business. I sit in an office next to that of the CEO but am no more than ten metres away from the trading desk and make sure to understand its operations and the other supporting functions. Having a good idea about financials – definitely something lawyers are often not great at – is a must, as is getting across that you are approachable and being humble enough to ask colleagues to explain something again so there is clarity about what is expected’.