About

The largest financial services group in the Nordic region and one of the biggest banks in Europe, Nordea has been delivering expert banking services to its customers for over 200 years with a total operating income of €9.5bn and total assets of €581.6bn as of 2017. With such a large profile, the bank has attracted some of brightest legal talents to its ranks across the region. Amongst the group’s Norway-based lawyers, head of transaction management Ylva Cornelia Axelsen came in for particular praise during this year’s research, with one nominator having the following to say about her skills and achievements: ‘[She] is an extremely able, knowledgeable and experienced in-house lawyer who is responsible for managing the expectations of a large number of internal commercial clients in the industrial and offshore shipping sectors of the bank as well as advising the agency and syndication teams of the bank. In addition to [her] significant day-to-day exposure [regarding] big-ticket loan transactions, [she] has been given widespread responsibility for transformational corporate restructurings
within the bank, including its multi-jurisdictional tripartite merger’. Axelzen’s reputation is in line with the wider legal team’s notoriety as having a pool of talented and business-savvy legal advisors.