About

Dr Florian Drinhausen was afforded the perfect introduction to Deutsche Bank when he moved from his highly successful private practice career, in which he was a partner at Linklaters. ‘When I joined Deutsche Bank’s legal department’, he recalls, ‘I was tasked with forming a new region within the legal department, the EMEA Region, which spans 14 countries each with a dedicated legal department. Having been an outside counsel for almost 20 years, this was ideal to learn everything about the organisation of a large corporate and begin the transition from outside counsel to internal general counsel’. Dr Drinhausen explains that his role with the company involved major settlements and other projects from day one, which provided him with ‘exposure to senior management of the firm and regulators of the financial industry’ alike. This led to a promotion in April 2016 to his current position of chief governance officer, reporting directly into the management board. Dr Drinhausen is now mandated to address all corporate governance issues throughout Deutsche Bank Group as part of a large, approximately 65-person team. Dr Drinhausen offers the following summary of what makes a top in-house counsel in the modern business world, given his huge experience of the legal field: ‘In today’s world, in-house lawyers need to be top managers of legal risk, and capable of giving clear, constructive and practicable advice to business divisions. This requires in-house lawyers to look beyond the mere legal question more than external lawyers would, and take other parameters into consideration, such as reputational risks as well as regulator’s expectations’.