Legal Counsel, Commodities, Global Markets London, Paris or Singapore

Job Summary

The role involves advising on complex legal and regulatory matters relating to commodities-linked derivatives, physical commodity trading and structured commodity financing transactions across energy, metals and related markets. The individual will work closely with the business to support transaction structuring, assess regulatory implications and enable the development of new products and initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

Legal support for Global Markets Commodities
• Provide general and transactional legal advice for Global Markets Commodities and Global Markets more broadly.
• Lead legal advice, guidance and support to business units and stakeholders on matters relating to Global Markets Commodities, working with regional Markets Legal teams.
• Work with Financial Markets Contracts to develop and maintain playbooks for EFET Master Agreements, support negotiations and related processes, including netting opinion reviews.
• Negotiate and complete transaction documentation, and review, maintain and manage documentation templates, automation and the Commodities Legal SharePoint know-how repository.
• Provide training on legal and documentation matters, policies and procedures, and provide required legal review and sign-off.
• Liaise with external counsel, country legal teams and compliance colleagues as required.
Identification and mitigation of legal risks
• Determine the adequacy, validity and enforceability of contractual and collateral documentation.
• Manage documentation templates and contribute to legal knowledge management.
• Support review of, and compliance with, relevant policies and procedures.
• Assist with process governance, operational risk management and client dispute resolution, where required.

New product development and roll-out to new jurisdictions
• Review and provide legal sign-offs for product and country governance documents.
• Design, develop and approve new product documentation and country-specific documentation.
• Lead and coordinate with country legal and compliance teams on global roll-out of new products.
Legal costs management and processes
• Control, monitor and report external legal spend and monitor the quality of services provided by external law firms.
• Provide non-panel law firm approvals on a selective basis.
• Act as process owner for country processes owned by Markets Legal relating to Physical Commodities Solutions documentation.
• Manage relevant processes under the Group Operational Risk Framework and associated risks.

Skills and Experience

Must Have Skills.
• Commodities Legal Advisory
• Transaction Documentation and Negotiation
• Legal Risk Management
Other Skills
• Product Governance
• Carbon / Emissions / ESG Product Knowledge
• Legal Knowledge Management
• Process Governance and Operational Risk Awareness

Qualifications

Key Experience

• Significant commodities markets experience gained within a leading law firm and/or an in-house legal team, ideally supporting an investment bank or commodities-focused organisation
• Strong transactional expertise with extensive experience advising on commodities derivatives, physical trading transactions, and/or structured commodity financing arrangements.
• Experience providing legal support for Global Markets, Commodities, derivatives, trading, physical commodities, financing and/or ESG-related products.
• Experience negotiating and managing transaction documentation, documentation templates and legal know-how repositories.
• Experience advising on legal risk, product governance, country roll-outs, operational risk processes and external counsel management

Certifications / Qualifications

• Legal qualification required for the relevant jurisdiction.
Languages
• English

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,

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.