Senior Legal Counsel - Financial Services -(M&F) UK868426

Role Overview: Morgan Philips Specialist Recruitment is presently representing a large US headquartered financial services company in their search for a Senior Legal Counsel to join their legal team in London. Reporting to the Head of Legal – EMEA, the Senior Legal Counsel will be a member of the General Counsel's Office, with responsibility for providing legal and regulatory advice and guidance to the company’s operations in EMEA. The successful candidate will be an experienced lawyer with a keen interest in EU and UK financial services regulatory work whose core responsibility will be the provision of advice with a view to crafting and implementing measures to align with legal or regulatory requirements while mitigating risks.

Key Accountabilities:

• Understand complex technical issues and provide accurate and commercial advice to the business on a wide range of topics under English and European Union law reliably and within the required timeframes.
• Support the management of legal issues across regulated and unregulated businesses in the EMEA region.
• Manage matters and projects, partnering effectively with cross-functional teams (e.g. Compliance, Business, Product, Tech, Operations, and Sales) fostering and building relationships built on trust.
• Collaborate with other members of the Legal team, both in the Americas and APAC regions, to ensure a consistent approach to legal issues across the business globally.
• Assist with the continuous improvement of standard form agreements, contract processes and legal policies and procedures.
• Assist with reviewing, drafting and negotiating a wide range of contracts balancing commercial objectives, operational requirements, regulatory requirements and risk management imperatives.
• Regulatory horizon scanning to devise effective solutions in collaboration with Legal, Compliance and Management, to develop efficient defence strategies and protect the business from risks, including by providing advice on the development and structuring of new business initiatives, new products and service offerings, transaction execution and legal and regulatory change.
• Maintain sound governance practices and monitoring the effectiveness of controls.
• Maintain relationships with the regulators, industry associations and other institutions by keeping up with regulatory changes and updates.
• Provide regular updates on matters to the Head of Legal – EMEA.

Qualifications:

• A solicitor qualified in England and Wales.
• A minimum of 5 years of post-qualified experience.
• Bachelor's degree preferred or equivalent experience.
• Experience as a practicing lawyer within the financial services sector and within a heavily regulated environment.
• Ideally, experience of working in house with a regulated financial entity.
• Experience and interest in general contract, corporate and commercial law.
• Solid understanding of the requirements of legal risk management to facilitate business in compliance with regulatory requirements, internal policies and procedures, and within risk tolerances.