About

With 10 years’ experience at Italy’s largest insurance company, Antonio Cangeri has been group general counsel of the Generali group since the end of 2012. He assumed his current position after ‘significant experience in other Italian financial institutions’, including as Generali’s head of group compliance. Leading a global team of approximately 600 employees, Cangeri’s broad remit oversees the head office and the group business units across the world providing full legal, regulatory and compliance assistance to facilitate and support business growth. After a change in Generali’s organisation and governance model, Cangeri was charged with the definition and implementation of the Generali group general counsel function’s structure accordingly. Having skilfully helped craft the current function via this restructuring, Cangeri sees the group general counsel role as being one of ‘direction, guidance and coordination’ with the creation of head office centers of competence aimed at serving internal requests. These centers have a specific focus on legal affairs, finance, investments, M&A, operations and Supervisory Authorities relations, with the overall risk-monitoring role played by the group compliance department. Requiring both expert legal knowledge and business nous, the group general counsel function assists its internal customers in an evolving legal environment, where applicable laws and regulations at Italian and European levels move quickly. Cangeri’s collaborative nature and emphasis on teamwork is also evidenced in the way external counsel is chosen. In the context of an increased utilisation of legal counsel, he worked closely with the internal procurement function to develop group guidelines for selection and engagement of external firms, setting out objective principles they must fulfil to assist Generali. Cangeri enjoys working with a ‘high-achieving and motivated’ worldwide team providing high professional standards, and believes strongly in a collaborative culture evidenced by the way his team are seen as ‘partners of change by “sitting at the table” with all stakeholders of the business’. In striving to accomplish his teams’ role as highly-regarded business partners, Cangeri identifies ‘ethics, professional excellence, open-mindedness and the caring for Generali’s people’ as the competencies that distinguish them.