About

After a successful career as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street, at firms including Davis Polk and Goldman Sachs, Indian-American Meenakshi Ambardar (Meena) moved to Stockholm in 2004. Ambardar spent her first few years in Sweden at home with her young children acclimating to her third country. In 2007, Ambardar demonstrated adaptability and ingenuity in creating an English-language job as the first in-house lawyer at EQT, a well-known European private equity fund based in Stockholm. In 2013, Ambardar joined Första AP-fonden (AP1), one of Sweden’s national pension funds, by then having become business-fluent in Swedish. As general counsel (investments), Ambardar covers M&A transactions, alternative investments (hedge, real estate, PE funds) and managed accounts. One of the more important transactions she has worked on was the EUR 6.6 billion acquisition of Fortum’s electricity distribution business in Sweden. The transaction, in which AP1 was part of an investor consortium, is one of the Nordic region’s largest M&A transactions in terms of monetary value. In addition to Nordic transactions, Ambardar also advises on a wide range of global projects, working closely with management and the business professionals of AP1. As part of the investment unit, Ambardar integrated legal review into the investment transaction process, procured an international legal panel and improved the standards and awareness of legal counsel work. The extra support that she provides gives additional comfort to AP1 in its investment opportunity review and decision process as well as execution capability on a first-class, international level. To advise sovereign wealth fund investors like AP1 effectively, Ambardar believes that counsel need a deep knowledge of public sector investor sensitivities, for example, the importance of environmental, social and governance considerations. Ambardar is able to use her international background to provide this advice for AP1, and, where necessary, bring in outside counsel that she has educated on AP1’s particular needs. Ambardar believes that for outside counsel, putting legal issues in the appropriate context and in a language the client understands is critical. She says ‘similar to other large global investors, counsel should keep in mind that AP1 needs guidance to understand why a particular legal issue is important and why it matters’. Ambardar continues by saying that ‘taking the time to know, understand and meet your client on-site is essential to providing pragmatic, thoughtful advice’.