About

Oliver Hengeler, director legal, EMEA at Calypso TechnologyI started his career in 2001 as legal counsel at T-Systems, the enterprise customers division of Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt. From 2006 to 2012, he worked for Wall Street Systems (later acquired by ION Group), a New York and London based trading and treasury management software provider, as senior legal counsel in their Frankfurt and London offices. Hengeler highlights the opportunity he had when working closely with ION’s CEO and founder Andrea Pignataro during the integration of Wall Street Systems into ION. During 2012 and 2013, Hengeler was associate general counsel at AvePoint. In 2013, he joined Calypso Technology, a San Francisco based software vendor, as their first lawyer in Europe. In 2016, privately-owned Calypso was acquired by private equity firms Bridgepoint and Summit Partners, where Hengeler was largely involved in the acquisition. In 2019 he was appointed as the lead counsel of Calypso, leading a global legal team for the first time in his career. During his time in current role, Hengeler has shifted the team’s mind-set so that every team member aims to become a trusted business advisor. ‘This requires each lawyer to fully understand the business we are operating in. Calypso’s legal team is highly visible, provides gravitas, credibility and enjoys high reputation within the organisation’, says Hengeler. Commenting on how he sees the in-house legal role evolving, he states, ‘Over the next few years in-house legal counsel in Germany will slip more into the role of trusted business advisors, similar to how the role evolved in the US. I think the more developed a market is and the more sophisticated a business is run, the more an organisation will realise the benefits of having a strong legal in-house team’.