| UBS
UBS
Director and general counsel | Vermaat Group
The support of the litigation team at UBS has been described as a key element in bringing the bank to where it is today, ‘being seen by peers as one...
General counsel and head of group governance | TMF Group
Joyce Winnubst joined professional services firm TMF Group 12 years ago and over the years has assumed additional responsibility to a core legal role. She has become a key part...
| SHI-MCI FZE (a subsidiary of Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria)
Oil and gas EPC company SHI-MCI FZE offers the largest fabrication and integration facilities in Africa. Equipped with unparalleled technologies and cutting-edge facilities, the company is on the way to...
| Subsea 7
OBX-listed Subsea 7 is a subsea engineering, construction and services company serving the offshore energy industry, and is ably served by an in-house legal department that is known within the...
| UBS Asset Management
Markus Ratz, head of legal transactions EMEA for UBS Asset Management has been taking an innovative approach to its use of external counsel: ‘We decided to set up an exclusive...
In the role of managing director and general counsel since 2005, Francis Wong leads the legal function at global financial services institution UBS in Hong Kong. He presides over a...
| UBS China
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of UBS, UBS China’s financial story started in China in July 2012 when it set up headquarters in Beijing. Today it has exponentially grown to a...
| UBS
UBS has been present in Italy since 1996, offering a high level of financial services to private, corporate and institutional clients on a global scale and today has a presence...
| Hubspot
Revolutionary online marketing and sales platform Hubspot is highly valued by its customers for allowing them input to their online presence via an assortment of innovative content management, social media...
| UBS
With over 500 employees and direct operations in 12 major Italian cities, UBS is the first specialised operator in private banking in terms of volume management. The Italian division has...
The Swiss legal infrastructure and digital innovation legal team, as well as the group contracting and technology legal team are both headed by managing director Sergio Greco and focus on the legal digital innovation and technology aspects of UBS’s businesses, particularly in Switzerland where the firm is the largest universal bank in the country. According to general counsel Daniel Morales, this team, consisting of both a group and a divisional aligned legal team, particularly stands out industry-wide ‘in terms of leadership in legal thinking as well as in strategic day-to-day legal advice and structuring support at times when UBS is coping with many challenges in its digital transformation journey’. Currently, it is made up of 11 lawyers in Switzerland and 27 lawyers globally. In his position as head of legal for infrastructure and digital innovation, Greco leads this legal department as part of the divisional aligned general counsel Switzerland organisation, consisting of the legal payment and digital products team. The group contracting and technology legal team consists of four regional legal teams (one being based in Switzerland) forming what is Greco’s global organisation, which is part of legal corporate centre services, a group wide general counsel function headed by Ueli Studer. Previously, before the two teams were combined under Greco, the legal payment and digital products team focused primarily on the product and client side in Switzerland, whereas the group contracting and technology legal teams covered the procurement side in a broader sense. ‘With this setup we have built the foundation of a holistic legal coverage for UBS’s digital strategy and combined the two essential parts of the value chain of digital products. By bringing these teams together, we increased efficiency, ensured frictionless front-to-back legal coverage and, most importantly, we created a team structure which can perfectly address the forthcoming digital challenges in the financial market, driven by emerging technologies, fintechs and open banking’, both Morales and Studer underline. These challenges require an in-depth IT and procurement know-how within the product side and in an open banking environment. On a global level, the team is closely aligned to UBS’s regulatory legal teams and the group data protection legal team, further building blocks of legal corporate centre services, and maintaining a great affinity to and competence in data protection law aspects. Transactions it has been involved in include the UBS on-boarding solution, launched immediately after publication of the respective FINMA circular. The qualified electronic signature, a unique solution for UBS clients allowing state-of-the-art full front-to-back digitalisation with the highest evidential value. ‘High specialisation combined with a good team-spirit enables creative legal thinking and high productivity and this makes them a strong partner for all relevant stakeholders and results in true holistic legal strategic support’, says Studer.
