About

An M&A expert with a highly impressive legal background in the financial services sector, Dr Michael Fischer has practiced as an in-house and private practice lawyer in both the US and Germany, and was a departmental head at SoFFin, before taking on his current role as general counsel for UBS Deutschland in 2011. Dr Fischer recalls three specific projects from his career that underpin his philosophy towards operating successfully as an in-house counsel: ‘There is a particular private equity-style transaction that I recall in which we entered a stage process in order to close the transaction to accommodate the various regulatory implications and consent requirements that needed to be met. This can be routine, but I mention this as a highlight because it is emblematic of how important it is to plan ahead and keep the deal structure flexible enough to allow for a rapidly changing picture. Another one would be the rearrangement of a particular business area that I needed to get involved in. The business area was being exited, which may seem run of the mill but given the size of the transaction and the relevance to the firm it was paramount to provide very close cooperation with the effective business areas and the other stakeholders in and outside of the firm. The third area I wish to highlight would be in regulatory change management, as my industry has been inundated with regulatory change over the last decade and providing for a structured and robust approach to these changes has been front and centre of what I’ve been doing’. Dr Fischer explains that he picked out these particular areas as they inform the main three tenets of what he believes make someone from merely a good into a great in-house counsel. ‘Being close to the business is absolutely central, and coupled with that is a desire to care for the business and its stakeholders’, he explains, ‘as not only do you have to understand the business to be effective but it has to be something that you truly care about. You have this one client, and you ought to be in the position that they can trust absolutely that you will do your job with the utmost dedication. At times taking care means more than doing the legal homework; you have to be excellent both from a strategic perspective and in your day-to-day legal work’.