About

The lean but highly capable Rabobank in-house legal team, led by head of legal Colin Fuller, is one of the foremost in its sector in Ireland. It has become recognised for undertaking a number of complex and highly innovative finance projects, with the team’s relatively small size proving no hindrance to this. When discussing projects that he and the team are most proud of working on, Fuller is quick to come up with an excellent recent example: ‘Last year we undertook a transaction called MilkFlex, which won a number of awards. This allowed dairy farmers to be afforded an altered loan repayment schedule depending on the price of milk at the time. We felt that this was an excellent example of a client identifying a need – dairy farmers are especially vulnerable to milk price fluctuations – and a company finding a product to meet that need. We supported and enabled this product to get to the client’. The team is, of course, accomplishing this in a highly regulated environment. As well as GDPR compliance, the team is looking to adapt to a much changed financial ruleset in the future. ‘The new Basel rules, for instance, will bring new commercial challenges’, Fuller explains, ‘while the turning off of Libor in 2021 is going to be fundamental change going forward’. Alongside himself, Fuller highlighted business legal affairs manager Karen Pearson as having made a vital impact on the team’s successes.