Corporate Banking Legal Counsel

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To ensure that the activities of the corporate banking division related to the role’s relevant product set are conducted in compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, and to help the bank manage legal and reputational risks associated with these activities. 

Accountabilities

• Development and implementation of best practice legal strategies related to the role’s relevant product set, to manage risk related to non-adherence to laws, rules and regulations.
• Subject matter legal advice and support to the Bank's corporate and investment banking divisions globally on a wide range of transactions and projects across trade and working capital finance, cash management, real estate finance, project finance, asset backed finance, lending and other corporate loan finance.
• Subject matter legal advice and support to the Bank’s businesses and infrastructure functions, including areas such as credit, compliance, risk, product management, tax, finance, fraud, transaction management, structuring and execution, litigation, commercial contract support, and operations, often in close collaboration with other legal teams across departments and jurisdictions.
• Subject matter support in the Legal department’s representation of the bank in legal proceedings related to the role’s relevant product set, such as litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations.
• Creation and/or review of legal documents for the relevant product set to ensure the bank’s adherence with applicable laws, rules and regulations. Maintaining and updating legal documentation related to the role’s related product set for the corporate banking division.
• Development and delivery of training programmes to educate employees on legal and regulatory requirements related to the role’s relevant product set.
• Pro-active identification, communication, and provision of legal advice on applicable laws, rules and regulations (LRRs). Keeping up to date with regards to changes to LRRs in the relevant coverage area. Ensuring that LRRs are effectively allocated to, and adequately reflected within, the relevant policies, standards and controls.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Purpose of the role

To overall purposes of this role is to support BB PLC manage its compliance with Laws, Rules and Regulations (LRRs) in accordance with Barclays LRR policies and standards. 

Any financial services LRRs are applicable to most, or a significant number of, business units in Barclays Bank PLC.  These LRRs are therefore ‘Broadly Applicable LRRs’.  For the purposes of illustration, examples of Broadly Applicable LRRs could include ring-fencing legislation, rules relating to the Senior Management Regime, and PRA Rulebook requirements.

Through this role, BB PLC is creating an optimised and efficient model for determining on an ongoing basis how the Broadly Applicable LRRs apply to the different business units within BB PLC (rather than having each business unit performing its own assessment), and assessing the effectiveness of controls to ensure compliance to those LRRs.

Against this context, the role entails:

• Determining which business units in BB PLC new LRRs apply to, and whether existing LRRs continue to apply to business units following a change in that business unit’s organisation, structure or business activities.

• Undertaking and reviewing the decomposition of Broadly Applicable LRRs (in other words, undertaking a provision by provision review of LRRs to identify the provisions which are relevant to Barclays, and which business units different requirements in the LRR apply to).

• Having undertaken / supported the decomposition of Broadly Applicable LRRs, to support controls mapping activities (in other words, make an assessment as to whether the controls which have been identified as being in place to comply with the requirements of LRRs are effective or not).

• Act as a Legal Coverage Lead for some of the Broadly Applicable LRRs which involves, amongst other things, assessing and discussing with other Legal Coverage Leads the impact on Barclays whenever there is material change to the requirements, interpretation or application of an LRR.

• Act as a champion for the Role of a Barclays Lawyer Procedure; assisting with queries relating to this procedure, best practice and providing training to new joiners.

The role is to support all of BB PLC, but sits within Corporate Banking Legal (which is a team in BB PLC Legal).

Accountabilities

• Monitoring legal and market developments and sharing this information with senior leadership across the BB PLC legal function.

• Producing analysis and materials for internal briefings, coordinating input from across the team and other functions.

• Undertaking decomposition of Broadly Applicable LRRs and undertaking controls mapping.
• Support the development of a global LRR inventory.
• Acting as a Legal Coverage Lead for certain Broadly Applicable LRRs.
• Leading the development and delivery of the team’s LRR strategy.
• Collaboration with legal tech, innovation and project management teams to drive LRR knowledge management efficiencies.
• Support the capture and sharing of LRR knowhow across teams.
•  Working closely with team members to co-ordinate Subject Matter Expertise (SME) input on deliverables to support the maintenance and development of a global LRR inventory.

• Reviewing risk issues to identify whether there has been breaches of LRRs, and escalating any such breaches in accordance with internal policies.
• Close coordination with the Central Legal Team maintaining the global LRR inventory and with Risk and Compliance colleagues involved in the management of the legal risk framework.
• Engaging with internal and external legal colleagues, business stakeholders and second line of defence.

Essential Skills/Basic Qualifications:

• Be a qualified lawyer in the UK or other common law jurisdiction.
• Ideally be a practising financial services regulatory lawyer or otherwise have  post qualification financial services regulatory experience.
• Have an understanding of working in a highly regulated financial institution.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, shares knowledge proactively, works effectively as a part of a team.
• Effective in a fast-paced, complex and multi-dimensional environment.

Desirable skills/Preferred Qualifications:

• Investment / corporate banking regulatory experience either in private practice or in house at a financial institution and a strong understanding of the key LRRs applicable to investment / corporate banking services.
• Have a proven ability to manage relationships with senior stakeholders.
• Ability to interrogate complex Excel spreadsheets.
• Ability to use Co-Pilot to drive efficiencies.

This role can be based in London, Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow.