What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?
Last year was exceptionally busy. We completed nine new projects including 2 exits for the vintage funds and 7 new investments for our latest Marguerite III infrastructure fund
Naming only of them seems a bit unfair towards those to be omitted. We are a greenfield fund investing in critical European infrastructure which means, especially nowadays, that easy deals are somehow rare. Still, if I am forced to name just one project I am personally proud of, I guess I would name the OnTrain investment.
We have teamed up with an experienced management team and local partners on the equity and project finance side to launch a locomotive stock operator OnTrain. The company will operate from Poland with its central location as a logistic hub and corridor between several European markets. It will offer leasing of up to 80 new locomotives manufactured by Alstrom and Newag to European rail carriers interested in utilising modern, environmentally friendly rolling stock fully suitable for cross-border transport of goods.
How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?
In over 15 years at Marguerite I have seen some risks fading away and/or becoming more relevant depending on multiple factors. There is no special set of rules of conduct to apply during “periods of instability”. Crises don’t have the habit of announcing themselves reasonably in advance so special procedures could be activated only when and as needed. I like to believe a professionally managed organisation should strive to develop practices that work for good and bad times, including the necessary precautionary procedures to apply at all times as part of prudent risk management.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?
Taking the assumption of me being modern enough to give a credible opinion on the topic, I would argue the role of general counsel increasingly requires the skill of adaptation and open-mindedness necessary to follow an evolution of their organisations. In over the 25 years of my professional career, the investment fund management sector experienced an impressive growth on many accounts, including the complexity of the legal and regulatory environment we operate in. For example, we see more and more funds targeting the private wealth clients sector or offering more liquid investment products, both of which has significant legal implications. I believe the need to adapt to new developments will only increase.
How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation?
By making sure an advice, support or supervision (whatever is appliable in the relevant organisation and/or circumstances) the general counsel brings to the organisation/project takes ESG principles and compliance on board. For a quite long time by now, a properly working compliance isn’t optional, it is essential for any financial institution to survive. The ESG principles is an important but, given various ESG standards and practices in the market, somehow more vague issue. As a general observation, I do notice projects with strong ESG background checks tend to perform better financially thanks to, among others, local communities and their decisionmakers being more supportive (for example during the Covid pandemic) towards projects benefiting from the more positive ESG perception.