Legal Counsel France

**Excited to grow your career?
**BBVA is a global company with more than 160 years of history that operates in more than 25 countries where we serve more than 80 million customers. We are more than 121,000 professionals working in multidisciplinary teams with profiles as diverse as financiers, legal experts, data scientists, developers, engineers and designers.

**About the job**:
Advising BBVA’s Paris Branch (Business and Support units) and BBVA (other branches and subsidiaries) for French legal topics, in all areas of law relating to their businesses or tasks (products, services, projects and/or transactions), preventing and mitigating BBVA’s legal risks under French Law in France or with French counterparties.

**As a Banking and Financial Lawyer the incumbent**:
1. Will provide support and legal advice to all BBVA’s Paris Branch departments and areas of business (mainly banking and finance, trade finance and global markets), on domestic and cross border legal issues relating to banking and financial activities, customer relations, commercial contracts, banking services and relationships with French authorities.

2. Will draft, or review and amend, each agreement governed by French Law to be drafted or reviewed by BBVA Paris Branch Legal Department, being standard or bespoken, as for instance:

- project finance, syndicated facilities, bilateral facilities, leveraged finance, fund/capital call finance, structuring financings, commitment/mandate letters, term sheets, secondary loans trading and intercreditor agreements for banking and finance;
- supply chain finance, receivables discounting, trade instrument issuance and distribution through participation agreements in trade finance;
- reviewing, drafting and negotiating French law master agreements for derivatives and repos (FBF IFT, Pensions livrées ISDA, CSA) for Global Markets Units.

3. Will extend this legal support under French Law to BBVA head office and foreign branches or subsidiaries when needed.

4. Shall be able to contribute to the legal structuring of specific transactions and to negotiate legal aspects of agreements alongside the business teams.

5. Shall be able to propose legal innovative solutions while ensuring that legal risks are kept under control.

6. Shall contribute to the implementation and updating the BBVA’s Paris Branch contractual documentation and internal proceedings and guidelines for legal aspects.

7. Will participate in the legal monitoring assumed by BBVA’s Paris Branch Legal Department.

8. Shall ensure that French legal risks are identified, communicated to BBVA Paris branch and BBVA Head Office and monitored.

9. Shall manage litigations involving BBVA's activities in France instructing, coordinating, and supervising external lawyers.

10. Shall liaise with colleagues and with other BBVA’s lawyers in other jurisdictions than France, in the context of cross border and multi jurisdictional transactions.

11.Will report to the General Counsel of the BBVA’s Paris Branch.

12.Will participate in BBVA's Paris Branch internal committees when needed.

**Academic background and knowledge**:

- Master 2 degree in French business law or French banking and finance law in a top French University.
- Deep knowledge of contract law (“Droit des obligations” and “Droit des Contrats Spéciaux”, especially financial) and Securities Law (“Droit des sûretés”). Robust and thorough approach to drafting and reviewing of documentation.
- Good knowledge of French banking and financial law for corporate clients, French insolvency law and French civil proceedings. Knowledge of French public law and French international private law would be a plus.

**Language skills**:

- Excellent written and spoken skills in French and English. Spanish would be a big plus.

**Soft skills**:

- Ability and willingness to learn and to give legal support for many different products (Loans, Trade Finance, Markets etc.).
- Good understanding of commercial needs and constraints.
- Appetite for new legal matters (sustainability, digital assets ), open-minded.
- Great rigor, autonomy, and organizational skills.
- Team spirit and aptitude for relationships. Ability to convince.

**Skills**:
Business (Corporate) Law, Business Finance, Civil Procedural Law, Collective Investment Undertakings Legal advice, Cross border services Legal advice, Data Protection, Derivative Contracts, Factoring and Supplier Financing Legal advice, Financial Contracts, Financial Markets Law, Global Trade & Export Finance, MiFID, Normativa y regulación financiera del negocio bancario, Payments Legal advice, Project Finances, Recovery and Insolvency, Regulations, Restructuring and insolvency, Reverse Factoring and Supply Chain Finance, Structured Funding, Sureties and Guarantees Legal advice, Syndicated Financing