About

Team size: 160 for Investment Bank

What are the most important transactions, litigations or other major projects that you have been involved in during the last year?

It is difficult to single out particular events given the challenging circumstances and turbulence we have seen over the past year: international political tensions; volatile markets and significant client events; the continued pace of legal and regulatory change; the rate of transformation in the financial services industry; and of course the impact of Covid on all of us.

Among all this, notable themes have included an increased focus on ESG, the growth of collective (class) action litigation outside the US, the digitisation of banks and banking products, and the establishment of a working model for providing financial services in the EU post Brexit. I’m very proud of the way our teams have managed through this period with resilience, commitment and delicate handling of difficult situations despite the uncertainties around the pandemic and largely being remote from one another for much of this time.

There have been a number of legislative changes in response to Covid. Have these benefited your company or had any other interesting effects?

UBS has continued to support our communities throughout the pandemic by providing credit and financing to those small and medium size businesses as well as individuals in need. Some of this has been as a result of new laws introduced at the beginning of the pandemic; but we also recognised early on that this was a crisis like no other we have faced and it was important to be there for our clients, supporting them in weathering the pandemic. That approach has proven to be the right one as we’ve strengthened our long-term relationships with clients and broader stakeholders alike.

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid lockdown?

Initially it was dealing with a lot of uncertainty and questions as to how the pandemic would play out, what it would mean for staff, and the repercussions on our clients, the economy and our overall business. There was no precedent or playbook for this situation which has proven really challenging. We have had discussions around many new topics such as levels of critical staff needed in the office, how best to protect our employees through the introduction of a variety of safety measures, handling sensitive personal data, and more latterly the myriad of issues arising out of a larger population returning to offices across our international network. Maintaining high levels of communication to keep up morale, team spirit and collaboration whilst remote working has been vital during this time and putting our people first has been the constant message.

Did the Brexit deal reached at the end of 2020 give you and your business greater clarity for the future?

The financial services industry did not benefit from an overall agreement around equivalence between the UK and EU coming into this year and so we had to assume a hard Brexit in that respect. However, we had prepared for an outcome that through a combination of internal restructuring, transfers of employees, and the implementation of a model around the provision of our services in the EU. This will continue to evolve over time as the relationship between the UK and the EU develops but we are in a position where we continue to be able to service our clients.

Are there any other of your achievements over the past 18 months that you’d like to mention?

One achievement that I’m particularly proud of is the progress we have made as a legal function in the Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) space. I’m privileged to be the sponsor of a programme that we only just put in place 18 months ago specifically for the function but in that time we have introduced a number of initiatives including gender and ethnicity aspirational goals for the function, individual goals for our senior managers, changes in our practices around hiring and promotions, a greater focus and collaboration with our key law firm partners on various aspects of DE&I, and the introduction of a number of programmes designed to provide greater access to the legal industry for students from diverse backgrounds.

We are not perfect, but we have been open about our desire to bring about tangible change, including publishing a joint letter to the legal industry last summer with several other international banks that denounced racism and supported targeted efforts to improve ethnic diversity in the profession. The really impressive part is that this is all down to the hard work of a number of legal staff who are passionate about DE&I and are doing this on a voluntary basis. Also, now we are helping other areas of UBS set up similar initiatives.