About

Sohaïl Mered stepped into her current role as legal advisor to State Street Global Advisors (SSGA)’s Irish business in the autumn 2017, after more than three years advising SSGA’s Paris-based business, and has been with SSGA for just over five years. Prior to SSGA, she developed her specialty as an in-house asset management counsel in several leading global financial services firms in New York and London, namely Prudential, Deutsche Asset Management, and Capital International. She completed all of her academic training in the US, and is a member of the New York Bar. As legal advisor to SSGA Ireland, Mered serves on the senior management committee and as legal counsel to the board of directors. She advises on client-facing matters, corporate governance, regulatory issues, as well as business initiatives and projects. She has held the same responsibilities and roles as legal counsel to SSGA France. Since 2016, Mered has advised on several strategic projects for the SSGA business in the EMEA region, the restructuring of the French activities and the execution of the firm’s Brexit contingency plan. Mered has the ability to integrate different jurisdictions and cultures, and add value to each of these businesses with solid legal advice and support. She has also been awarded an internal legal department award for her work on a regional restructuring project a “Commitment to Excellence” award 2017. Mered highlights that, ‘early experiences are the most important in developing as a legal professional… I was introduced to a high-pressure corporate environment early on, and gained invaluable experience and acquired the core skills on which I continue to rely every day, allowing me to juggle competing demands in a fast-moving business, and build effective relationships across a large institution spanning the globe… All of my subsequent roles allowed me to sharpen these foundational skills, and have moulded my “legal personality”, notably [her] ability to navigate four different jurisdictions to provide in-house legal counsel to several global asset management firms’. SSGA is a global leader in institutional asset management, entrusted with more than US$2.8 trillion in assets, as of September 2018. The asset management industry and SSGA Ireland have experienced an ever-increasing state of legislative and regulatory complexity and Mered has been responsible from a legal perspective for the smooth and successful implementation by SSGA Ireland of the challenges brought about as a result of a revamped version of the MiFID II, GDPR, and CP 86. In addition she has managed the additional complexity and challenges brought about by Brexit on the business and emerging risks faced by the business particularly in relation to cybercrime. In the words of a nominator, ‘overall Mered has demonstrated clear vision in guiding SSGA Ireland through the regulatory challenges since 2018, through what would, for most in-house lawyers, be once-in-a-decade type events’.