How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure organisational resilience?

When a crisis hits, my first instinct is to get close to the center of decision-making immediately. Not to control it, but to be present at the moment when decisions with serious legal impact are being made under pressure — and to ensure that the people making them understand those consequences in real time. The legal afterlife of a crisis — regulatory queries, litigation, shareholder claims — is almost always shaped by decisions taken in its first hours. In this crucial period, my role is akin to a first responder: keeping the patient alive with no further major damage.
My second priority is to draw a clear line between what the business needs to do to survive the immediate situation and what it needs to avoid so as not to kill the company downstream. That line is not always welcome. Crisis mode creates enormous pressure to act fast and fix consequences later. My role is to hold that boundary — not as an obstacle, but as the person in the room who is thinking about where the institution needs to be in six months, not just next week.
On alignment with business strategy — when the GC is genuinely embedded in the life of the institution, present at the moments where strategy is formulated, targets are set and risks are assessed, alignment during a crisis is not something that needs to be negotiated. It is already there. That depth of continuous involvement is what allows me to assess, quickly and with confidence, the extent and cost of any legal or commercial sacrifices that the crisis response requires — what can be conceded, what cannot, and what will need to be rebuilt once the storm has passed. A GC who knows the business intimately is a far more useful crisis partner than one who arrives at the table having to ask what the institution actually cares about.
That is ultimately what organisational resilience means to me. Not a crisis management playbook. Not a legal checklist. But a legal function that thinks and acts as a genuine part of the institution — one that is trusted enough to be heard when it matters most.
What is the biggest shift you have seen in the role of General Counsel in the past five years, and how do you see it evolving further?

The GC has moved from being the last line of defence to being a first-mover. Five years ago, legal was largely reactive — called in to contain a problem or close a transaction. Today, in a bank operating under intense regulatory scrutiny and rapid technological change, the GC is expected to be in the room when strategy is being shaped, not when it is being documented. The next shift will be even more important: as AI reshapes both how we work and what we are liable for, the GC will increasingly need to be a translator between technological capability and legal accountability — a role for which most legal functions are not yet prepared.