As head of the CBA Group legal department, David Cohen makes light work of billion-dollar mergers and class actions. But as Olivia Collings discovers, it’s the success of his colleagues that gives him true satisfaction

He’s now considered one of the most influential general counsels in Australia, but to attain that status David Cohen had to walk away from the security of a lucrative partnership at Allens Arthur Robinson, and test the uncharted waters of a career in-house. “I wanted to see if I was capable of doing something else,” says the CBA Group GC. “I knew I was good at being a partner, and I could have continued doing that, but it was the prospect of doing something new that made me leave.”

Cohen spent 17 years at Allens, including 12 years as a partner and a two-year stint in Japan. As a partner he was head of the funds management, real estate and superannuation group, a practice he was predominantly responsible for creating. It was a role which gave him plenty of exposure to clients, but he admits that was small comfort when he made the momentous decision to move into the general counsel role – first at AMP – in 2003.

“I was completely unprepared,” he says. “However, I just knew intuitively that it was the right thing to do.”
During his first months at AMP Cohen came to realise just how important it was for the legal team to be closely entwined with the business and aware of what it was doing. He also came to realise the importance of communication in an organisation. “Unlike in private practice where you will mainly be dealing with several people in the firm and in the client’s team, whenever I was involved in an issue in the company I was required to communicate with large numbers of people – and that was a big learning curve initially,” he says.

In June 2008, after five years at AMP, Cohen moved into his current role, only three months before the global financial crisis hit. Cohen also acknowledges the role the financial crisis has played in his management of legal requirements at CBA. “One of the great things about the GFC is that we were really able to use it as our opportunity to get very close to the business and make sure we were doing the things that mattered most to the business,” he says.

As well as dealing with the GFC, Cohen was thrust into the spotlight with CBA’s December 2008 acquisition of BankWest for A$2bn, from British-based HBOS. Cohen calls the acquisition a “once in a lifetime” opportunity and says regardless of the need for competition in the banking sector, you don’t give those opportunities up.

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