About

Currently managing director and partner with responsibility for legal and compliance across the treasury, corporate, asset and wealth management and investment banking arms of BTG Pactual, Jill Wallach has a highly impressive trajectory as an in-house in the banking sector. Having begun her career in private practice at Linklaters in London, she was appointed director and senior counsel at Merrill Lynch (New York) in late 2000 before moving to a similar position at Credit Suisse in 2004. Here she would also gain experience of Asian markets as a result of a posting to Hong Kong. At BTG since mid-2009, she currently heads a 15-strong team and is credited with playing a key role ‘in building a quality legal and compliance team at an investment bank that has gone, within five years, from a new entity to a market leader’. Moreover, during this process ‘she has demonstrated versatility and adaptability and an ability to balance the deal dynamics with high execution and compliance standards’. Highly conscious of ‘the pressure of international regulations’ and the differences in compliance matters between Brazil and other markets, Wallach ‘seeks to build awareness of these differences among her Latin American colleagues, sensitizing them to the more complex rules and regulations in developed countries, and ensuring that the firm as a whole is committed to a “best practices” approach’. While she regards the establishment of a culture of compliance as among her most significant accomplishments, ‘no mean feat for an emerging markets bank trying to grow its business in an array of different jurisdictions’, she draws most satisfaction from the development of her team: ‘I am a big believer in mentoring junior staff’’, she notes, ‘nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing my protégés succeed. At nearly every stop along my career, I have had mentors who were instrumental in my development and success, and I try to pay it forward. I also seek to ensure that they too “pay it forward” by requiring them to hire a law-school intern year round’.