Visa Europe has appointed Deutsche Bank's former global strategy head Emma Slatter as its new general counsel.

Slatter will start in the role next week (20 March), replacing Niamh Grogan.

The card payment giant's legal team also includes deputy GC and executive director of commercial law Prini Pithouse, who was appointed in July 2016.

Slatter left Deutsche last year and initially set up as an independent consultant. She took up the role as global head of strategy at the bank in January 2016, having joined in 1995. Her responsibilities included managing the impact on the legal team of the bank's 2020 strategy, which aims to make ‎€3.8bn (£2.9bn) of gross savings by 2018.

She was Deutsche's general counsel for the UK and western Europe between 2010 and 2015, managing a team of 200 staff across Europe, the Middle East and South Africa. Between 2003 and 2010, she was head of global markets legal for western Europe, with responsibility for 75 lawyers.

She joined the bank in 1995 from Slaughter and May, where she had spent six years.

In January 2016, Deutsche general counsel Richard Walker retired, to be replaced by co-GCs Simon Dodds and Christof von Dryander, who had been deputy GCs since 2013.

The bank is currently finalising a review of its external legal panel. The review, which is carried out every two years, is being led by Rose Battaglia, the bank's New York-based global COO for legal and compliance, on behalf of Dodds and von Dryander.

It is understood that Latham & Watkins, White & Case and Hogan Lovells will be reappointed to the panel, alongside a raft of firms named on the panel two years ago, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, Allen & Overy, Slaughter and May, Simmons & Simmons, Ashurst and Clifford Chance.