About

Team size: 140
Major law firms used: Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Clifford Chance, Clyde & Co, DLA Piper, Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Macfarlanes, RPC, Womble Bond Dickinson

‘We’re in a position where we don’t really mind what happens with Brexit because we’ve got it covered,’ AIG EMEA general counsel (GC) and chief operating officer Chris Newby says. ‘It’s been a busy year and we’ve led on three key projects, which has kept us out of mischief.’

Those projects have dominated the workload of Newby’s 140-strong legal team. There was GDPR and an EU Insurance Distribution Directive to deal with, as well as a headline Brexit transaction the insurer announced in April 2018: splitting the European business between two new entities in Luxembourg and the UK to ensure minimum disruption to its insurance coverage when Britain leaves the EU.

He says AIG was one of the first companies to finalise such a transaction, which was confirmed in late 2018. Most of the work was handled in-house, requiring the recruitment of additional lawyers on a short-term basis, while Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer partner George Swan provided external legal advice. ‘A new legal entity generates a lot of work,’ Newby comments. ‘We decided from a client perspective that for policyholders, getting a Brexit-proof structure through prior to 29 March was a competitive advantage. But even though we’ve got a structure, there will be a lot of regulatory work flowing out of Brexit.’

The wider business changes also saw the legal team reshuffle. It was previously divided between northern and southern Europe, but that has shifted to a split between Continental Europe and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Diego Manzetti is GC of the former, relocating from Italy to Luxembourg, while Aviram Gavish is GC for the MEA region. The third region is the UK, headed by Newby, who also has oversight of all of EMEA.

Another recent initiative, called the Way of Working, sought to increase efficiency within the legal department. That saw the development of an in-house workflow management tool to help improve the way the business instructs lawyers, while every one of Newby’s lawyers has an individual career development plan. Newby added the in-house chief operating officer role to his responsibilities in 2017.

‘The legal team has got to show it can support the moves of the business. If you’re a chief executive, utilising the legal function in that way means you can get more out of legal.’