Team size: Approximately 260  

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?  

Our primary focus over the past few months has been UBS’ merger with Credit Suisse. This has required a significant effort to close the transaction within three months of the announcement and much work since completing integrating the two sides of the organisation. As part of this, we have worked across various aspects of the deal, such as conducting due diligence, seeking regulatory approvals, negotiating with government agencies, and working with our businesses and teams to prepare for a smooth client and staff integration.  

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years? 

I see a continuing evolution of the role of a general counsel from a trusted legal adviser to a strategic partner. General counsel are valued nowadays for legal acumen and the ability to think and act strategically, enable business growth and innovation, find solutions and resolve critical issues, and build strong culture and diverse and inclusive teams across an organisation. This breadth makes it a challenging role but interesting as a result! 

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?  

It was a simple innovation, but we rolled out a pilot in London that took some pretty complex business terms for investment banking clients and turned them into plain English. The work was all done in-house, and the reception with clients, in particular, was amazing – less time spent negotiating, reduced time to execution, and a more positive experience overall for clients. Off the back of that success, we are now using a legal design ‘sprint’ to significantly simplify and digitise other client documentation that we collectively spend much time working on as a team.     

What are some of the main trends impacting the industry sector you work in in the United Kingdom? 

The financial services sector is always sensitive to geopolitical and macro-economic trends, and that seems to have heightened over the past couple of years with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and associated sanctions issues, the need to navigate political tensions in other parts of the world, rising inflation and costs, and of course dealing with the tail end of Covid. If you add to this industry trends such as greater regulation, the increased adoption of new technologies, cyber threats and the heightened focus on ESG and sustainable products, our legal staff are increasingly being asked to provide strong leadership, certainty and stability amongst all the change.