Ask any financial services institution’s in-house team to name their main challenge of recent years and many will point to what the team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) describes as ‘unprecedented levels of regulatory change’. It is in this context the BAML legal team of more than 150, servicing the business across 21 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), believe they have delivered in providing clients with financial services while protecting the firm and its shareholders. The EMEA legal team, led by GC Sajid Hussein, chiefly supports global corporate and investment banking, as well as global markets, on a broad range of global transactions. Between October 2016 and September 2017, BAML advised private equity firms on 16 M&A deals valued at $45.5bn. It also acted as lead financial adviser to Actelion Pharmaceuticals in its $30bn acquisition by Johnson & Johnson and as joint global co-ordinator on the $13bn underwritten rights issue for UniCredit. The firm also supported a couple of major initial public offerings (IPOs), notably the £3.4bn listing of Allied Irish Bank and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s $851m multijurisdictional IPO. But for BAML, formed following Bank of America’s $50bn acquisition of Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis, regulatory change dominated during 2016 and 2017, made even more difficult by volatile markets. The list of new financial regulations is long, with BAML’s legal team pointing specifically to 11 pieces around financial products and other areas it has worked on with the business to understand their impact, notably the Market Abuse Regulation, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II and Brexit. BAML established a technology review team in 2016 to look at initiatives, new tools and technologies that can help both the legal team and the wider business. Representatives from the EMEA in-house team sit on a global legal artificial intelligence (AI) working group, which is looking at AI and robotics, document automation tools, negotiation platforms, deal and document management, billing processes, policy management, and researching legislation and regulation. The team, mostly based in London but with employees in Chester, Madrid and Paris, also points to its diversity initiatives. Hussein’s leadership team is 70% female, as are 68% of the region’s managing directors for the legal team. Overall, the in-house function is 62% female. It also supports Aspiring Solicitors, a programme that works with university law students from LGBTQ, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and socially-disadvantaged backgrounds, providing lectures, mentoring and networking events. Hussein’s team also puts an emphasis on diversity and inclusion with its partner law firms, annually assessing them on their BAME and gender statistics. Hussein comments: ‘I am extremely proud of the EMEA legal team’s contribution to the success of [BAML], not just because of the sound counsel we provide across global banking and markets but also because of our efforts to give back to society through our diversity and community engagement initiatives, and our partnerships with the charitable sector.’