About

Having worked at French multinational bank and financial services company BNP Paribas since 1997, Derek Göbel has learnt first-hand from the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. Indeed Göbel describes it as ‘the perfect fire-drill’ for learning how to deal with crisis. He was the sole lawyer for BNP Paribas in Asia at the time and his ability to handle matters in extremely difficult circumstances was rewarded with a promotion to the position of head of legal and transactions – Asia Pacific. In this role, while based in Hong Kong, he set up the Asian legal and transaction management team. After almost seven years he moved back to Europe as the global head of derivatives – CIB Legal for the company in 2007. His appointment was swiftly followed by the global financial crisis and he had to rely on the crisis management skills he developed a decade earlier. Reflecting on this period Göbel says, ‘as global head of derivatives I was in the eye of the storm and dealing with all of the most senior management at the bank on a daily basis’. In his current role as regional general counsel for Asia Pacific, which he has held since 2011, Göbel has hired litigation and investigation specialists as well as a group of generalist lawyers as a response to what he sees as a significantly increased regulatory environment. ‘We are all having to do a lot more, but with less. This squeeze is the challenge for in-house legal departments and the winners will be the ones that can reduce the reliance on external counsel and then prioritise and deal with the major legal risks internally’, he says. Göbel has also achieved recognition for building an international legal team and seeing it flourish whilst maintaining a strong focus on seeking efficiencies, via employing better technologies and software as well as exploring off-shoring capabilities. ‘These are initiatives that are being looked at closely from a global perspective as it is often the case that Asia is leading on these kinds of projects’, he adds. Before joining BNP Paribas, Göbel was an associate at law firm Ede Charlton (then Andersen Legal) for one year and at Simmons & Simmons before that between 1992 and 1996.