About

The Middle East’s largest bank by assets, Qatar National Bank has a large, highly diligent and capable in-house legal function to match its prominent position in the sector. The exceptionally large team numbers a total of approximately 130 employees, and is headed by group general counsel David O’Sullivan, an extremely qualified international lawyer with experience of magic circle firms and HSBC’s in-house legal department. O’Sullivan explains that the past two years have been an exciting and transformative time for the bank and its legal function, as it has ‘added team members in Asia and Europe to support our transformation from a local bank to a global bank’. When doing so, the team looks to capitalise on the talents of lawyers familiar with the regions it is expanding into, making sure to ‘focus on locally qualified hiring in [its] network’. Alongside this, it has been very active in terms of its support of the company’s projects. As well as dealing with treasury funding deals around the world, ensuring the company’s readiness for the GDPR rollout has been a major concern for the legal team that was handled successfully. O’Sullivan is proud to have such a well-resourced and talented legal team at his disposal but picks out Aisha Al Mohannadi as being a particularly strong performer in the group legal team based in Doha.