16 December 2021
Cecile BELLORD
Interview
Cécile BELLORD , Head of Legal & Insurance Department – LDA
1) Could you summarise your career path and present your current position? If you have evolved within LDA, could you please specify it?
I have been a maritime lawyer since 1999, when I took the oath. After 7 years in a law firm, I left the bar to join the world of professional organizations and institutional relations: first as a lawyer for the French Federation of Maritime Pilots then Deputy General Delegate of Armateurs de France.
In 2017, I decided to join a more operational area in the shipping sector by becoming the Legal and Insurance Director of the LDA Group. The support and the trust of the senior management have enabled me to build a comprehensive and professional team to serve the entire group. In addition to the traditional scope of work of a legal and insurance department : company law, group structuring, development and management of contractual activity, support for financing operations and purchase, sale of vessels, underwriting and management of all the group’s insurance policies, litigation management, etc … the Legal & Insurance team brought a real “Risk management” dimension by identifying and evaluating the risks that the group faces and by implementing the best tools in order to master them.
Now, the Legal & Insurance department has become the reference partner in risk management, strategy support and for the group’s commercial development.
2) What do you particularly like about your job?
Legal structuring of commercial projects is extremely exciting and makes it possible to give meaning to an activity that supports the group’s commercial developments.
This position allows me to have a transversal look at the activities and strategy of the group, thus strengthening my sense of belonging.
3) About your job: would you have an anecdote or an important fact to share?
I had the opportunity to step in the Erika case as the firm I worked for at the time represented the charterer. Which “Maritimist” would not have liked to participate in such an emblematic and historic case ?
4) What is your motto ?
Have a sense of effort