About

Thomas Görgemanns is general counsel at Deutsche Annington Immobilien, with 210,000 properties in 600 locations Germany’s largest housing association, entirely owned by private equity investor Terra Firma Capital Partners. Görgemanns’ recipe for a successful legal department is partly an ‘increase in the degree of freedom and responsibility of every team member’. This approach is based on his substantial housing sector experience. Prior to joining his current employer, he worked for its competitor Gagfah which he advised on two IPOs and numerous transactions, among them the simultaneous acquisition of two groups of companies with 41,000 housing units with a total value of €2.4bn. He also gained substantial expertise when building the Gagfah legal department ‘in a period of turmoil right before the IPO’ in 2006, during which Gagfah was set up as Société Anonyme under Luxembourg law. He perceives success in working with external counsel is not only based on legal skills and experience, which he regards as a given, but ‘what really makes a difference is pragmatism and commitment as well as a grasp of commercial issues’.