Globally, Ogier has 900 employees at 12 offices, including 54 in the grand duchy. The firm specialises in advising alternative investment funds.

Aaron Grunwald: Why did you set up an office in Luxembourg 10 years ago?

Daniel Richards: It was essentially a great adventure, which probably sounds not very sophisticated, perhaps. But it was. We had two partners and a small number of very enthusiastic and ambitious and dedicated and loyal colleagues who started with us. Today, with seven partners, we’re over 50 people in total.

The team has grown both in breadth and depth over those 10 years in a way that, again, it may sound trite, but, personally, I feel immensely privileged to work with the people who are with us at Ogier Luxembourg, because there’s a great, great range of diverse talents and experiences from all sorts of different environments and different jurisdictions. And it’s something that as an individual, I find really rewarding, from a sort of intellectual curiosity point of view, to be able to work with people with such a range of experiences.

So why did we do it.... 10 years ago, the international investment landscape for clients was changing.... Around that time, [the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive] was being launched. The prospect of a pan-European marketing passport to access institutional investors across the EU, on a very uniform, systematised, easy-to-operate basis was clearly something that was driving client interest. We could see that this was something that was going to be the future.

Luxembourg, of course, at that time also was building several new tools in the toolbox, or the sandbox as people sometimes call it. The [special limited partnership] SCSp was being launched. This was expressly modelled on a lot of the international fund vehicles that my firm had acted on for many years. Clearly this was going to be of interest to the clients that we were were acting for. And I think experience has proven that correct.

The growth of alternative investment funds, reserved alternative investment funds more recently, the combination of different types of fund structures, combination of funds structured in different jurisdictions serving different investor needs, but essentially all targeted at the same investment thesis, that’s exactly the sweet spot for our clients. And it’s the sweet spot for us. And that’s what’s driven a large amount of our growth in parallel with the growth and success of the jurisdiction over the last 10 years.

How has your client work evolved over the past decade?

Richards: It’s probably fair to say it’s quite different. It’s grown, it’s developed. So for example, when we first opened, cross border investment in real estate and private equity real estate was a really strong sector, both for Luxembourg, and for cross-border investment generally. And it’s perhaps no surprise, we did a lot of that work. Today, that work is still important, and it’s still valuable. It’s still a core part of many law firms’ and fiduciaries’ business. But in addition to that, we’ve seen the growth of private equity across the asset stack. We see credit funds, special opportunity funds, infrastructure firms, we see venture capital firms, we see a lot of sustainable investment funds, and a lot of funds focused on environmental issues presently.

I suppose historically, it was often the case that finance was introduced very close to the ultimate assets. Today, in common with large parts of the market, there is a huge, huge growth in fund finance itself. So this is finance that’s being introduced at the fund [level], not only at the level of the asset, and that’s an area which has brought with it a need for different legal technology, combining secured lending, fund knowledge, regulatory knowledge. That’s been a massive area of growth for us. That’s been huge.

Bertrand Géradin: On the corporate side, we’ve historically worked mainly with private equity investors, asset managers investing in structure all across the world [using a] Luxembourg platform. We are seeing, over the last 12 months, more and more blue chip clients making a position in Luxembourg. But also, something which is quite new for the corporate practice [is that] more and more litigation [cases] around the investments that asset managers have.

Are those cases being lodged in Luxembourg?

Géradin: Here in Luxembourg, yes.

Those are cross-border cases?

Géradin: Cross-border, yes. We’ve really seen a shift from clients typically using US or UK firms or firms based in Paris to handle claims in Luxembourg. We see a shift now of this type of clients directly using Luxembourg firms to handle the litigation in Luxembourg, in front of the Luxembourg court.

What is fueling that change in preference?

Géradin: The first thing, and as Dan mentioned, with the introduction of the AIFM directly into Luxembourg law [and the increase in the total number of Luxembourg-domiciled investment vehicles], the documentation of these funds is being governed by Luxembourg law. Meaning that if there is a dispute, it will be handled in Luxembourg. But also, I think it’s because lawyers in Luxembourg have become more expert. They’ve been able to win the trust of clients to handle the case in Luxembourg.

The market is growing and your firm is growing. There must be some complications that come with that. What are the biggest challenges? What keeps your clients up at night? What keeps you up at night?

Richards: There’s been a lot of change in the last 10 years, the last five years, last two years, currently, right here, right now, today, there’s a lot of change. And I think one of the things that has really resonated with me over the last 10 years is that change happens, whether we like it or not. It just does. The choice that you have, as an individual or as a business, is how you respond to the challenge of change. I think that as a business, we have a consistently change-positive mindset. It’s one of the things that we look for when we recruit people. We’re looking for people who have got essentially an optimistic, open, curious mindset, who see change as opportunity, rather than as a threat. And I think from that you get to the point that change shouldn’t actually keep you up at night.

But surely, Dan, you meet as a leadership team and surely there is something that is either regularly at the top of your agenda or keeps coming up over and over again?

Richards: You’re absolutely right. There are always priorities, there are always challenges. One of the things that we see is that in the context of growth, in the context of change, the list of priorities, the content of the priorities are always changing. But there are always priorities.

But to get to the point, what is the biggest challenge facing us? I personally think that probably the biggest challenge facing us is a challenge that’s shared by a number of actors in the ‘place financière’. And frankly, that is recruiting, to supply the client demand. And that is a a difficulty that is an an outcome of growth.

Géradin: I think the challenge for us is to keep building our reputation in Luxembourg. To really be viewed as a good place to work is not something that happens overnight.

We really need to make sure we remain a place where people like to come and work every day. And that’s also key to be able to recruit the right people.

Richards: The need today to have a genuine, sincere, authentic, well developed value proposition to your employees is essential. Ten years ago, many businesses were able to offer quite an old fashion model, where there was a very clear employee-employer dynamic and you made a job offer, there’s an interview [etc]. That still exists today. We’re very proud to be able to say to potential recruits that, working with us, they will work with some of the leading global institutional clients, and some of really interesting deals across the table from other market leading firms in Luxembourg. From a career perspective, that is great. We also want to say to them there are international travel, international secondment opportunities within our international group, and that is also very attractive.

But that’s not enough by itself. We also have to explain, in detail, how we work as teams, how we approach flexibility, how we approach the value proposition to employees. We actually have to say, like other firms do as well, ‘this is why it will be great for you to work with us and this is why we’re excited to work with you.’ And I think that change in the dynamic is partly an outcome of the growth and success of the jurisdiction, and of many firms within it, including ours. But it’s also a slight change in the dynamic within the recruitment market, and within the employer-employee stakeholder relationship as well. And that’s been a change over the last 10 years.

What else do you want to mention about working in Luxembourg?

Géradin: It’s really a unique opportunity within the EU. For people being able to come from France or the UK or Belgium and work in Luxembourg, it’s a unique opportunity that anyone should really consider. I’ve been in Luxembourg for the last few years. And I think I will spend the rest of my career in Luxembourg. It’s really a nice place to work.