Treasury Legal – Counsel

We are looking for a highly motivated, commercially focused lawyer to join our Treasury Legal team, reporting in to the General Counsel - Treasury. This is an important role which will play a key part in helping ensure that Nationwide achieves its strategic objectives. For us, it’s not just about having the right technical expertise, you also need to be able to get things done, work collaboratively and be driven to learn and succeed.

As a lawyer in the Treasury Legal team, you will support and deliver legal advice to the various teams within the Treasury function. While the precise scope of the role will vary depending on Treasury demand and team resourcing, it will include:

• Managing programmatic debt issuance (both secured and unsecured) and standalone transactions, listed across a range of UK and offshore exchanges. 

• Managing and advising on derivatives and repo documentation and transactions, plus related regulation and market practice.

• Advice on securities law, regulation and market practice in the UK and other relevant markets (some knowledge of US securities law and practice would be helpful but not essential).

• Building strong and enduring relationships with internal clients and stakeholders, as well as external counsel and market participants.

• Striving for continuous improvement in Nationwide’s operating practices and processes, including identifying efficiencies, improvements, and opportunities to reduce costs.

You’ll also keep an eye on what’s on the horizon by monitoring any changes in legislation, regulation and the wider market.  Using that knowledge and insight, you’ll help shape our processes and ensure our policies and procedures evolve in line with changing requirements. You’ll work with others to anticipate where future legal problems and issues are most likely to arise and to devise effective controls to mitigate them.

The Treasury Legal team sits on the Treasury front office trading floor which allows us to be in close communication with our clients and stakeholders, whilst also forming a core part of the Legal and Secretariat function. 

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at our London office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.
 

What you’ll be doing

You’ll use your expertise to provide strategic legal advice and support for the establishment, issuance and management of secured and unsecured funding programmes as well as tender offers, liability management exercises and consent solicitations. In addition, you will provide legal advice on derivatives and repo documentation and related regulation and market practice. You will also consult and deliver on longer term projects involving regulatory updates, changes to our operating procedures, and provide advice to our investor relations and sustainability teams. 

About you

• You will be a solicitor, qualified in England & Wales, with excellent academic credentials.

• You will have experience in an in-house role, in particular within financial services, or experience at a reputable law firm doing capital markets work. 

• You will ideally have some knowledge of bank/building society treasury activities and the commercial and regulatory environment within which we operate.
• You will have knowledge and experience drafting prospectuses or offering circulars and other capital markets documentation, and of the listing and disclosure rules for the London Stock Exchange.
• You will ideally have some knowledge and experience of derivatives and repo documentation.
• You will be able to recognise issues of strategic, legal, or reputational importance and assess how they should be resolved. 
• You will be able to build and establish strong relationships, especially with senior stakeholders, and become a trusted advisor, providing concise, commercial, balanced and timely legal advice.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role: 

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes.

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%

• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year

• Life assurance worth 8x your salary

• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme

• Wellhub – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.

• Access to an annual performance related bonus

• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career

• 25 days holiday pro rata

Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society

We forge our own path at Nationwide.

As a mutual, we’re owned by our members - those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don’t see customers as the engine of our own profit. We share our profits with them and put their needs first. Always there when they need us. Supporting them and their lives.

If you’re inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about our customers, you’re one of us.

At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. As a community we want our working lives to count. As a team, we celebrate what we achieve. As a standard-setter, we work for the good of customers, communities, and broader society.

We are Purpose-driven. Uncompromisingly Customer. Unstoppably Nationwide.

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV plus cover letter and answer a few quick questions for us.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.