How One GC Cut His Legal Department in Half, Then Rebuilt It
Jose Gonzalez of QBE North America has worked to raise the profile of his legal department at the New York-based insurance firm and navigated major change.
October 30, 2017 at 11:03 AM
10 minute read
Jose Ramon Gonzalez, general counsel of QBE North America.
When Jose Gonzalez took over as general counsel of insurance firm QBE North America in April 2014, he was told to cut his 60-person legal department in half while still handling all the company's daily legal needs.
How did he pull it off? With a carefully planned process. Gonzalez spoke with Corporate Counsel about that process in a recent interview.
“QBE was being re-engineered from the inside out,” Gonzalez said. The downsizing included selling off two divisions and reducing the number of employees from 8,000 to 3,000. His New York City company is part of Australia-based QBE Insurance Group, which grossed nearly $12 billion in revenue in 2016.
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