Cognia Law Makes New Appointments, Including Market-leading Financial Services Lawyer, Justin Ridl

LONDON, BIOT - Aug. 23, 2017 - PRLog -- Cognia Law, a next-generation provider of legal, compliance and risk management services headquartered in London, has announced the appointment of Justin Ridl as Global Head of Legal Services, along with the appointment of Michelle Rothuysen and Arianne Vanden Berghe to Cognia Law's leadership team.

Justin, Arianne and Michelle bring a wealth of market-leading in-house legal, banking and finance, derivatives and structured products, management consulting and project and programme management experience to Cognia Law. They join a leadership team that includes senior lawyers with international commercial, litigation, M&A and claims management experience.

Justin joined Cognia following 10 years in his role as Head of the Corporate and Investment Banking Global Markets Legal Group at Barclays Africa Group Limited. Prior to this, Justin lived and worked in London for 8 years as a lawyer in positions at the London Stock Exchange, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Ashurst and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. In his position as Global Head of Legal Services, Justin's role will include managing and driving the expansion of Cognia Law's banking and finance service delivery teams in South Africa, based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and in the UK, as well as managing relationships with Cognia's key banking and finance clients, which include tier‑1 global investment banks and asset managers.

Cognia Law'sfinancial service sector team focuses on providing innovative managed legal services solutions for the legal and compliance functions of banks, asset managers, insurance companies and other financial institutions, including in relation to the structuring, negotiation and execution of OTC derivatives and other structured products. Cognia's teams of lawyers and consultants have developed integrated, technology‑driven solutions that support market participants for BAU and project work, this includes solving the challenges brought about by new regulations (EMIR, MIFID II, GDRP, etc.) and structural changes being driven by events such as Brexit.

Arianne has over 20 years of commercial and financial services experience. She has worked as in‑house legal counsel and as a consultant in the financial services sector; as a Director and Legal Counsel for Global Derivatives, Structured Products and Retail Solutions for Dresdner Kleinwort; for Deutsche Bank as a Director and Head of their Structured Products Group, as their Legal Equities and Markets Global Counsel; for Merrill Lynch as Trading Counsel for Global Equity Linked Products, and for Bacob Bank NV (now Dexia NV), as Head of their Legal and Compliance Unit for Financial Markets.

Michelle has spent the last 20 years working across a range of companies in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Jersey, where her roles have included consulting, interim management, project and programme management and the establishment and running of two project portfolio offices.  Michelle's experience includes roles at Fortune 500's such as Standard Chartered, Old Mutual and Clifford Chance, and extends to working with a number of technology and financial services start‑ups.

Janet Taylor-Hall, Cognia CEO, comments: "We are delighted to welcome Justin, Arianne and Michelle to our team.  As a rapidly growing next‑generation Legal Services Outsourcer, we believe it critical that our leadership team brings world class legal, technology, management consulting and leadership skills to the management and development of our teams, the leadership of our service lines and the relationship management and oversight of service delivery to our clients."

Contact Details

Lucia Toich

Email: lucia.toich@cognia.com

Tel: +44 (0) 203 375 8624 / (T) +27 (0)21 100 3140

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Cognia Law provides its clients globally with individually tailored legal, compliance and risk management solutions.

Cognia's clients benefit from their:

·         investment in finding and growing talent,

·         ability to be agile and scalable;

·         near and offshore delivery capacity; and

·         proven collaborations with their best-of-breed technology partners and other legal service partners.

The Cognia team believes in challenging the existing status quo and current "best practices" in favour of an even higher value-adding client experience. Integrity, consistency and performance frame their philosophy.

For more information about Cognia Law's innovative range of services, visit www.cognialaw.com or follow them on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/3157139), Twitter (https://twitter.com/CogniaLaw).