Interim Regional Legal Director — Recovery

Not a deal lawyer, not a litigator, not a company secretary

The seat draws on all three disciplines, but it is none of them alone. A regional legal director who sees every question as a transaction will price risk well and miss the dispute it creates; one who thinks like a litigator will defend positions the business should have settled; one who thinks only in governance terms will produce clean minutes about poor decisions. What this interim appointment needs is someone who can hold transaction, dispute and governance judgement in one view and carry it to board level, with the executive authority to act on it for 12 months.

Joining three kinds of legal judgement

The work begins by agreeing with the Regional President which legal decisions the region takes and which thresholds local teams keep. In property, those thresholds tend to hide in unexpected places: a tenant incentive approved at asset level, a partner consent that sits in an agreement nobody rereads, a dispute strategy set by whoever happened to receive the letter. You will choose the evidence the region uses when it commits funding, people and approvals, and decide which existing commitments are carried forward and which are paused or ended.

You will also say no. A proposal that slides cost or risk onto another team, or onto a co-investor, without anyone agreeing to bear it goes back to its sponsor, and so does an investment case that is silent about who will take up the change, which other approvals it needs or how much could be lost. You will settle who leads which legal work and how issues climb, close disagreements with operating leaders while budgets and staffing are still open, and establish a steady board cycle for reviewing progress, exceptions and outstanding decisions. Useful controls should be protected, the cost of every exception made visible, and the region left with a stronger bench of legal and operating people than you found.

Eight jurisdictions and a feel for exceptions

Your experience comes from businesses with revenue of $445 million or more and 1,500 or more people, operating across eight or more countries, and you can separate an exception a local market genuinely requires from variation that persists only because of history. Joint venture experience is looked at closely, since partner consents and deadlock provisions often decide what a property business can actually do; platform pivot and professionalisation experience matter too. Governance ethics should stand at level 4; transaction work, the conduct of disputes and investigations, and the handling of a board and its stakeholders should each sit at level 3. An unresolved question does not stop you giving the Regional President a recommendation. One reluctant country head will not hold up your decision, and you will own its outcome across all 12 months.

Twelve months, and a selection that mirrors them

Before the first ninety days are out, the region should have one set of thresholds joining transaction, dispute and governance calls, agreed with the Regional President. At month nine, the verdicts on carried-forward, paused and ended commitments should be settled, and conflicts with operating leaders closed before any funds or staff move. By month 12 a steady board cycle should be reviewing legal progress, exceptions and outstanding decisions, and it should be able to run without the interim in the room.

Selection follows a similar arc. You speak with the Regional President first, by video and in confidence, during week one, and return to the Regional President in week three to work through a live legal question together. The fifth week puts you in person before a panel of executives, one from each function of the business; the seventh week is reserved for the full board and its directors. Five working days is the longest you will wait to hear how each stage went.