Kinstellar Budpest leader Csilla Andrékó
Csilla Andrékó is the managing partner of the Budapest office and the head of the Banking, Finance and Capital Markets and the Restructuring & Insolvency practices of Kinstellar where she focuses on banking, finance and capital markets. She was one of the original partners when Kinstellar was formed in November 2008 from the CEE offices of Linklaters (Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest). Andrékó talks to us about what it’s like to be a female leader in what is still often a man’s world.
You’ve had a very interesting career. Can you give us a sense of your background?
I finished university in 1993. During university, I studied abroad quite a bit and knew I wanted to do something in international law. Clifford Chance appealed to me as an international firm and I was able to secure a two-year scholarship. The first year I obtained an LLM in London and the second year I spent working in the London office of Clifford Chance. Through this scholarship I studied international business law, finance, trade, and EU law, all of which provided a unique opportunity. Only very few lawyers at that time had had this exposure to this area of law in Hungary and it helped start my career engaging in cross-border transactions when I came to the Budapest office of Clifford Chance. There are lots of business elements in my area that involve not just law, but additional subjects like accounting, and finance. It’s a broad area with sophisticated clients.
In your time practicing, what elements of business law have sustained your interest?
There have always been new developments and the market developed as we were working on it. At the start of my career Hungarian lawyers, like us, practicing in international law firms started implementing English law style finance documentation into Hungarian law and practice. Then came the capital markets transactions. We did the first Hungarian forint denominated MTN Programme in Hungary. The next new finance product was the PPP financing and we advised on the first truly PPP-style motorway project in Hungary. Recently, energy/infrastructure project finance, restructuring matters and high yield bonds have been big. I’m constantly learning new areas and have the opportunity to be exposed to a number of facets of business.
How do you keep sharp on so many various topics?
We’ve been focusing on training and knowhow a lot. We do lots of training when new products are released. While training is crucial, learning comes through doing. On larger international transactions we work with international firms and we kind of learn from them too. New products are normally developed in London or the U.S. before they are imported in Hungary, but it requires us to learn everything in the Hungarian context and implement everything for the Hungarian legal environment.
The real difficulty as a managing partner is that you have to follow trends and find time to sit and read the law itself, which is challenging especially in recent years when we have experienced significant legislative changes in Hungary. As a junior attorney you are expected to research for senior attorneys, but one is still required to synthesize and analyze that research to understand it. It is time consuming, but very important. Luckily, after a while, one is able to build more easily upon an acquired base of knowledge.
What’s trending in your sector?
There is a problem because banks are not really lending in Hungary. The finance sector is feeling the heat of the global crisis and the Hungarian government introduced the highest bank levy in Europe, which is ongoing and debilitating to banks. There is also a problem of nonperforming loans and bad debts, which persist. Lending has basically stopped because of the banks’ shrinking returns. What we’ve seen is that banks are reluctant to finance even good projects. Those who borrow turn to other sources like capital markets.
I’m cautiously optimistic of the finance sector regaining strength. There have been more transactions, more products, and more deals. Slowing confidence is returning and growing. Banks still have a problem of low profitability. In order in to lend more money they would have to see less severe treatment. We see movement from the government side now getting involved in M&A and project finance and trying to buy into finance sector. The government has already bought into smaller banks, which is ongoing, to encourage additional lending. So, the state is trying to increase economic activity, but without large commercial banks, it will not happen easily.
What is it like to be a female managing partner in a global firm?
Hungary is still a macho society and it is rare that you see female leaders, CEOs or managing partners. As a woman, you’re also responsible for family and many times family and work cannot be easily balanced. There are also cultural elements that distinguish Hungarian thoughts on work and family and gender norms. For me, I was never aspiring for this position. The previous managing partner of the firm resigned and then I took over and I managed the office through challenging times.
It was never my ambition to become number one, which could be a major difference between men and women in this field. Male colleagues tend have clearer ambitions to be partner or leader. Female lawyers are less ambitious in this respect. Once I got into this office, however, I was not conscious of the gender difficulty. When I interact with male bankers, I don’t think about it anymore. Now, male and female colleagues alike just listen to what you’re saying and if it is valuable and well considered, no one regards gender. Interestingly, I’ve noticed women do not really have to have the fight with men. Often, negotiating male partners deal with ego and sparring. Women don’t have to do that. They don’t need to overcome the male.
In a way it’s an advantage because you can forget silly ego fights and you can focus on material elements of the negotiation. At the same time, women need an especially strong support network. Women have to get support from family because this profession is demanding. If you’re a woman and you have a family you need backup from home.
What is being done at the firm level to bring more women to the table?
Kinstellar doesn’t have any real program per se. We always try to pick the best people. We have premier lawyers in top positions, including a number of women. We work to ensure that talented female attorneys leaving to have families are able to come back and transition to accommodate their new lives. We finance mothers staying on maternity leave; after 6 or 12 months they can continue part-time or transition back to fulltime when they are ready. I try to help colleagues with these decisions by enabling them to work as they are able and assist them in their decisions about returning to work. It is important that part-time working mothers who have the ambition to get promoted can do so successfully. This is important because work and raising a family should not be “either/or.” It should be possible to do both, but support all around is crucial.
Who have been your mentors and what attributes have they shared?
I did not really have female role models coming up, as all the leading attorneys were male. To some extent, I saw what I didn’t want from some male managers. I think it’s incredibly useful to have examples of managing styles that you know you want to avoid. I did not have female role models, but the real motivation and what I can relate to is the English style corporate culture: the “Lockstep System,” which requires that you depend on teamwork, collegiality, and trust. At firms organized this way, like Kinstellar, we all share profit and are working toward the same goal by supporting one another. That culture is very strong here. At every level, we expect lawyers to work in teams, and we avoid the silos. That in turn has helped the female attorneys by diffusing the power of controlling individuals.
If you give opportunity of flextime with women, they appreciate it and they work harder to show it was a good decision. It’s about investment in people. If you believe in talented people, the fact that they have a family shouldn’t inhibit anyone from succeeding. Because there are so few top female attorneys, the issue has become bigger than it should be. You need to balance family and work, but we need to work to a stage where it’s not so rare. There are lots of talented women, with many qualified female lawyers. The profession is becoming more balanced just because of this rise in talent and ambition.
The Andrékó File
Title: Managing Partner, Kinstellar Hungary; head of the Banking, Finance and Capital Markets and the Restructuring & Insolvency practices
Primary practice areas: Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
Previous firm: Clifford Chance
