About

Despite turbulent times for the Irish financial sector in the recent past, AIB’s group legal function are able to cite tangible successes in the form of the bank’s results and the way they are perceived within the business. An appreciated and respected cog in AIB’s operation, the CEO places the legal team’s advice and guidance ‘at the centre of strategic decision-making’ according to one source. Group general counsel Helen Dooley leads a legal team of 140 staff and is a key presence at the top level of the management structure; she sits on AIB’s Leadership Team and also attends all board meetings. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the entire structure of AIB’s legal department has been modified leading to a shift from a decentralised and disparate model to a group of cohesive teams aligned to core business units. Such a change has allowed the team to play a central part in AIB’s return to profitability and there are several ways in which the legal team’s centrality has assisted great results for the bank’s recovery. AIB’s capital restructuring, including issuance of new instruments, led to a €1.7bn return to the Irish State of monies invested during the financial crisis, with the internal and external legal work excellently orchestrated by the team. The team has also made concerted efforts to drive upskilling, knowledge sharing and employee engagement and mobility, internalising needed expertise. Some very testing targets aimed at improving efficiency and cost-saving were introduced, and taking a key role in shaping them the legal team led targeted outsourcing efforts that have saved over €450m since 2012, devised a voluntary redundancy programme helping reduce headcount and supported a deleveraging programme selling off €2bn in assets. Well known in the sector for their inventive approach to challenges, the team can point to the way they’ve worked towards AIB’s goal of embracing digital banking. The bank aims to become a leader in the provision of digital banking products to consumers, citing this as being one of the keys to AIB’s corporate strategy over the medium term; further proving the legal team’s effectiveness in achieving company goals despite a fast-moving and complex market setting.