Looking back at

THE GENERAL COUNSEL ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2022

The General Counsel Annual Conference of March 24th focused on the collaboration between Finance and Legal. GCN extended a warm welcome to all the attendees and Stefan van Raay, director of the Cobra Museum, told the participants more about the special location. He also mentioned their newly acquired art exhibition by Korda: Cuba, Che, Glamour, of which the GC’s would encounter plenty throughout the day.

In line with this year’s theme, keynote speakers Bas Brouwers, CFO at Rabobank, and Francisca Comiche, General Counsel at Rabobank, are experts in the fields of Finance and Legal. Bas and Francisca shared their thoughts and knowledge on various topics that were touched upon during an interview conducted. The key takeaways were that you must act during exceptional times like Covid or the war in Ukraine.This is, on the other hand, more difficult and complex than it would seem at first glance. There are often many complex ethical dilemmas and companies are forced to make statements that should be well thought out as they can have a major impact on their day-to-day business. To deal with these sorts of matters Rabobank has a crisis team and ethical commission. They discuss various subjects, one of which is the war in Ukraine. A change in company policy will have an impact. The fine line between sanctions legislation and own company policy results in many complex ethical aspects which will need to be addressed. As a lawyer you will need to go beyond legal analysis and you’ll also need to be willing to make choices.

The day continued with 12 different Roundtable sessions hosted by various expert moderators on a variety of topics. The interactive and animated discussions were continued during the network breaks and a tour around the Cobra Museum.

Here you can read the whole report.