Job Summary

The role requires a deep understanding of the Group’s business strategies across Egypt and the Middle East and ensuring their legal implementation. You will work closely with the Head of Legal and the broader legal team to manage legal risks, operational challenges, and complex litigation. You will also develop strategies to identify potential legal risks, strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, and mitigate documentation execution barriers.

Additionally, the role involves supporting business, credit, and middle-office teams in resolving documentation negotiations and ensuring appropriate use of legal templates. The Senior Legal Counsel will also provide legal guidance to product teams on transactional matters and projects.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy

• Awareness and understanding of the Group’s relevant country business strategy(ies) and ensuring their application by the Legal Function in Egypt and other markets in the Middle East cluster.
• Support and collaborate with the Head of Legal, Middle East and other members of the Middle East cluster and wider legal team to escalate legal risks, relevant operational risk events, significant, high risk or complex litigation and to develop effective strategies for identifying legal horizon risks for relevant businesses and in collaboration with relevant business and risk stakeholders, strengthening relationships with regional regulators.
• Follow the Group Management Responsibility Policy to ensure effective risk management and the implementation of property controls within the Middle East region and specifically with respect to the Group’s business in Egypt.
• Provide proactive advice to legal and other stakeholders and other relevant committees, on all legal and regulatory issues that have a significant impact on the Bank’s operations in Egypt and other markets in the Middle East, working with external counsel as appropriate (and seek to proactively identify such issues). 

Skills and Experience

• Legal Knowledge 
• Drafting Skills
• Commercial awareness
• Corporate banking products awareness
• Deep Understanding Egyptian Laws and Regulations Knowledge

Qualifications

• Educational background in Law to degree level/post-graduate & professional studies as necessary to fulfil this role.
•  Qualified international lawyer with minimum 8-10 years post qualification experience preferably with at least 2-3 years working in an in-house legal team.
• 8-10 years experience in banking and finance with an understanding of commercial and investment banking products.
• Familiarity and experience in dealing with Egyptian laws and regulations. The candidate must be an Egyptian national, based in Egypt and qualified before the Egyptian Lawyers Association  
• Fluent or professional business level Arabic language and fluent English
• Familiarity and experience in dealing with Egyptian laws and regulations. The candidate must be an Egyptian national, based in Egypt and qualified before the Egyptian Lawyers Association
• Willingness and flexibility to travel and work, specifically to, from and in the Middle East for temporary but regular periods of time.
• Practically minded, experienced with business related challenges and facilitating resolution.
• Effective and concise communicator in English and strong contributor/collaborator who is team focused.
• Sound judgment of business practices, regulatory relationship management and legal and reputational risk.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.