| RSA
RSA
| RSA Insurance Group
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Lead counsel | BC Energy
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Lead legal counsel | Pegasus Airlines
| RSA Insurance Ireland DAC (RSA)
General counsel | Woolworths Group
Legal counsel | Pegasus Airlines
Country head of legal | Amgen
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Charlotte Heiss, GC of insurance giant RSA, is no stranger to the GC Powerlist, having been named as a Rising Star in the 2014 edition. This year her legal team is highlighted after a standout performance. The function consists of a small head-office team of two lawyers, both of whom have an ‘incredibly broad role’. There is a five-strong team of company secretary staff, in addition to regional GCs in Canada, Scandinavia, the UK and the Middle East, all of whom have a team underneath them. Despite the small size of the head office team, it played a significant part in one of RSA’s most important pieces of work in 2017. Senior legal counsel Yvonne Lee, who has since left to join Slaughter and May as senior counsel, supported Heiss on the issue of two floatingrate restricted tier-one notes of around £300m in aggregate size. Slaughters capital markets partner Guy O’Keefe advised RSA on the mandate. He comments: ‘Charlotte Heiss is a very impressive GC and very good to work with. I have been involved in several transactions where her advice has been much needed. She is a very good advisory GC to the board too.’ O’Keefe also praised RSA’s head of legal for the UK and international business, Jonathan Cope, describing him as ‘a very good transactional lawyer’. Of the team as a whole, O’Keefe says: ‘It might be a small team, but it rightfully has a strong reputation.’ This supports Heiss’s assessment of her own group: ‘It’s a conscious decision to have such a small team. We are a business that is undergoing transformation and my team is regarded as best in class. People have fewer roles but are focused on what’s important for the business. We can attract and retain really high-quality people.’ Another major transaction for RSA came at the beginning of 2017, when it disposed of £834m of UK legacy liabilities to the Enstar Group. Heiss led on that deal again, supported by Cope. She regards this work as some of the most substantial handled last year, describing it as ‘an ongoing process.’ While not a dedicated head of legal operations, Peter Townsend, RSA’s head of financial crime, deals with a lot of that type of work. Reporting on a dottedline basis to Heiss, Townsend is spending half his time making sure RSA will be GDPR-compliant. ‘GDPR is taking a lot of work, but we are confident we will get there before May,’ Heiss says.
