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Markus Ratz, head of legal transactions EMEA for UBS Asset Management has been taking an innovative approach to its use of external counsel: ‘We decided to set up an exclusive engagement with one major law firm to guarantee a global standardised set of templates and enabling them and us to closely work together; this has allowed us to significantly increase the output of external counsel’. Ratz, supported ably by deputy head Melanie Schumann covers asset management legal for the company EMEA-wide, and explains that the team has seen a major expansion of its role in recent years, initially covering continental Europe real estate transactions and then moving on to transactions across all asset classes, including in UBS’ home country of Switzerland. To achieve this, Ratz is clear that the team needs ‘very experienced and specialised lawyers’ given the fact that the team has to deal with highly competitive markets which require the team to act ‘substantially quicker’ than contemporaries, working on a more speculative basis than other in-house teams.