Adedayo Ajibade – Transcript
Hello, my name is Adedayo Ajibade. I am currently an associate
in the banking department here at Linklaters. I came here via the
non-law route, as I studied Chinese and Japanese at university.
So far in my career at Linklaters, I have actually had
opportunity to put my language skills to good use. First in a
secondment out to Tokyo as a legal assistant and later on a client
secondment to Tokyo. And then in terms of my Chinese, I’ve been
sent out to China twice to work on the deal which later won China
Deal of the Year and China M&A Deal of the Year in 2006. That
was an amazing opportunity that I got because of my language skills
and also because of the global nature of the firm. And also because
of the prestige of the firm. This was a highly publicised deal, a
highly important deal for one of our most important clients. One of
the comments later was that there was no other firm in the world
that could have done what we did on that transaction.
Another thing that has drawn me to Linklaters, apart from the
global nature and the prestige, is, of course, the people.
Obviously it’s a bit of a cliché to say it’s the people, which
differentiate the firm, but from my time at law school and to my
time today, it’s really been borne out. These are great people to
work with and the way in which we really work as a single firm. So
apart from the differences in time zone, working with somebody down
the corridor in your same department, and working with someone,
say, in the Tokyo office is exactly the same.
It can be quite a challenge fitting in your personal life around
what is, by its nature, a very challenging and demanding career.
But, with a bit of forward planning and of course a little bit of
luck, you can actually still do that. In fact I still pursue my
interests of jujitsu and taekwondo outside of the office. I haven’t
used it in any negotiations yet, but, we’ll see!