About

Headed by general counsel Rachel Curran, the Ulster Bank legal team consists of 15 lawyers and two administrative staff. The team has been involved in a range of strategic initiatives and commercial activities on behalf of Ulster Bank over the last 12 months. This includes coordinating and project managing changes required to the Ulster Bank corporate structure to comply with the requirements of the Companies Act of 2014, active management of a collection of both outbound and inbound work including the fallout to the Supreme Court decision in UBIL v O’Brien (2015) and involvement in an €18bn deleveraging programme on behalf of RBS Capital Resolution Ireland to assist with de-risking of the bank’s balance sheet. As a result of the financial crisis there has been a significant increase in regulation in the banking sector over the last number of years; the challenge for any in-house team in that type of environment is to consistently evolve and make sense of the new regulations for the business in a commercially-focused manner. Noel Gaughran head of legal and litigation says ‘despite having a small team, in comparison to other large banks in Ireland, the challenge is to continue to serve the needs of the business in a dynamic, fast-moving and constantly changing environment’.