Astorg Partners is a private equity group with over €4bn worth of assets under its management, and is a pan-European operation with offices located in Paris, London and Luxembourg. Group general counsel Sophie Saden leads the internal legal support at the group, having accrued several years of in-house experience since joining the company in 2002. 2015 saw an important development for Astorg’s business, the company – assisted by Saden – set up another management firm in Luxembourg named Astorg Asset Management.

Saden’s time is shared between these two companies as well as the other entities under the company’s control, and she describes the overarching remit of her role as follows: ‘I am in charge of all regulatory and corporate aspects of the companies and our investment funds. I also deal with all legal and regulatory aspects of all fund raisings, and I participate in portfolio acquisitions, monitoring and sales’. With a track record of setting up many procedures and processes, Saden is proud of her contribution to the company’s dealings and the utility of her role, and she explains how she has ‘worked on the raising of more than €4bn of funds with first class investors in various countries’.

Her experience has helped mould her as a legal professional, helping her realise that ‘even complex issues and negotiations have a solution’, having handled ‘complex regulatory topics’ including all applicable European regulation Astorg is concerned with. Speaking to the challenges she faces, Saden notes the fast-paced regulatory changes that afflict the company: ‘Technology moves very quickly but [this is] nothing compared to regulation. A lot a new regulation, which we will have to implement, will come out before the iPhone XI does’. Speaking to her overarching philosophy surrounding the general counsel role, Saden states how ‘it is important to show our legal function is valuable and core to the business for a maximum quality and security of the company in carrying out its transactions’.