About

In his current role as general counsel for Norwegian Export Credit Guarantee Agency (GEIK), Ståle Torgersbråten leads the largest internal department in GIEK consisting of 15 lawyers and legal employees. Coming from a private practice background, Torgersbråten worked for top Norwegian corporate law firms Grette DA, Wikborg Rein & Co. and Selmer where he was head of the firm’s Moscow office. He assumed his first in-house position at GIEK in 2010 as a commercial lawyer and was promoted in 2014 to general counsel. His current position covers a vast array of diff erent tasks; from human resources issues to strategy discussions, as well as diff erent transactions and negotiations all over the world. Torgersbråten is particularly proud of some of the transactions he has taken part in in Bhutan, Russia and Bangladesh: ‘I consider myself lucky to be able to work for the Norwegian exporters, and follow them around the globe. Our very high requirements with regards to corporate social responsibility, environment, and anti-corruption practices, also make me certain that we – at least in the long term – are contributing positively to a higher standard in international transactions’. Since joining GIEK he has made a number of changes to transform and streamline the way the in-house legal team works, overall increasing the number of tasks they look into. In addition to this, he has also set up four informal teams in the department that work with the same kinds of assignments and cases. ‘This is in order to make sure that we have the best expertise on such important business legal tasks, and that we deliver the same kind of “product” when we give our advice to the organisation or to the exporters or cooperating banks’.