About

Ueli Studer joined one of the biggest Swiss multinational banks, UBS, in 2006 in the capacity of legal counsel. Over the years, his role has exponentially evolved, and in 2007 he took on the role of head of legal (corporate finance) and structured transactions, where he experienced the ins and outs of partnering up with the business and other control functions in long-standing relationships, something that ‘truly energised’ him as an in-house counsel and made him excel. ‘In such relationships, I always felt highly motivated to assure best possible coverage of daily business while wanting to stay closely involved on transformational work’, adds Studer. In 2015 he assumed the role of head of legal products and distribution, a position which allowed him to experience how to bring different teams together across divisions. Since 2017 he has been serving in a global role as the head of the legal regulatory and governance group and in May 2018 the function of IT, contracting and shared legal services was added to his portfolio with the team being subsequently named “legal corporate centre services” to reflect broader scope. This role has showed him how ‘demanding and exciting’ it is to lead one of the firm’s global legal functions and to provide, together with a team of subject-matter experts, legal advisory services to several corporate centre functions, including group regulatory and governance, communications and branding, group finance and group chief operating officer with its underlying functions related to group technology, group corporate services and group sourcing. Not only has this resulted in a diverse portfolio of legal topics, but as Studer highlights: ‘The team of 50 is embedded in the hubs of UBS primary regions of Switzerland, US, Asia Pacific and EMEA and offers a lot of opportunities for the subject matter experts in the team to seek engagement in matters of group strategic relevance’.