About

Monisha Kamdar joined Raiffeisen Bank as head of legal-Asia Pacific in 2010. At the time, Kamdar was the bank’s first lawyer in Asia and was responsible as sole regional general counsel for establishing and building the legal function. To increase the complexity of this task, she was hired at a time when the bank was looking to expand its product range and supplement its standard trade finance business by offering more complex mezzanine and structured finance products. Kamdar is a voting member of the bank’s problem loan committee, which reviews corporate non-performing loan transactions and makes decisions with an aim to achieving the highest net present value for the bank. Joining of this body, Kamdar says, required her to undergo an intense period of education: ‘I had a very short period of time where I had to understand the inner workings of the organisation, how and what each department functions and does and then to device processes that worked while at the same time helping the business units with the business which was streaming in very fast’. Kamdar has since become a trusted voice within the bank and has led on a number of enforcements and recovery during a tumultuous financial period. She has gone on to present the committee with new options for recovery, including the use of litigation funding as a way of alleviating the financial burdens of an expensive litigation. Before moving in-house she was a senior associate at the Singapore offices of Latham & Watkins, a position she held from 2002 to 2010, and a lawyer at the Indian firm Crawford Bayley & Co.