GC POWERLIST – BRAZIL TEAMS - legal500.com · senior lawyer is Jose Moscati, in his role of managing director – associate general counsel, contracting, Latin America. Moscati

1BRAZIL TEAMS | GC POWERLIST

GC POWERLIST – BRAZIL TEAMS

At the forefront of the emerging markets bloc, Brazil is a traditional leader amongst the world’s most prominent developing economies and is considered by many multinational businesses as an essential place to operate in to take advantage of new consumers and markets. Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy and can boast a population that is the fifth largest in the world, and

also enjoys the highest per capita income of any of the BRIC nations and a sizeable middle-class, which earns between $11,500 and $29,000 per year and facilitates high levels of domestic consumer activity.

Brazil and its business leaders have fostered several relationships with foreign economies, including that of global superpower the United States, and is also a member of numerous transnational organisations devoted to the growth of free trade and investment in South America, namely Mercosur.

Despite a variety of challenges in the region, namely political distrust and corruption in addition to wealth inequality, during the past two decades, the government has prioritised macroeconomic policies to control inflation and promote economic growth. In recent years increased inflation has been the target of government economic policy via Brazil’s Central Bank, whilst unemployment – particularly in urban areas – is also a key characteristic to correct if Brazil is to reach its economic potential.

The legal teams contained within these pages, and on The Legal 500 website all possess excellent legal knowledge as a matter of course – they are all technically gifted and highly trained but this is not necessarily what sets them apart. Rather, it is their ability to utilise their legal knowledge strategically alongside keen business insight to make a positive impact towards their organisation’s success that place them among the top in-house legal counsel in the region.

I would like to express my personal thanks to our sponsors for supporting this publication, Castro, Barros, Sobral, Gomes Advogados. A special mention must also be made for in-house lawyers that took time to speak to us throughout the process, and for the research team that worked on this GC Powerlist publication.

David Burgess Publishing Director The Legal 500 Series

CONTENTSI

Sponsor: CBSG Advogados 2

Commercial and professional services 4Consumer products 6Energy and utilities 13Financials 20Food, beverage and tobacco 28Healthcare 30Industrials and real estate 36

Information technology 44Materials and mining 49Sports and media 54Telecommunication services 55Transport and infrastructure 58

Index 59

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Here we are, again. During the past 12 months, Brazil has been rocked on an almost daily basis by a number of interrelated political scandals.

Notwithstanding, our institutions remain fairly solid and, best of all, the economy is finally showing some signs of recovery. It will be a long way until the country’s economy reaches the levels of the past decade, but it seems that the worst (at least from the economic standpoint) has passed. The challenges remain though: Brazil is far from being an investor’s heaven and doing business here is not for amateurs. In this scenario, sound legal advice is of paramount importance. Hence, the role played by general counsels and legal departments continue to be instrumental and crucial to a company’s success. Legal departments have to be in constant standby condition, being pro active rather than reactive,

ready to guide management in strategic decision-making processes, while raising awareness and providing the necessary training for the company’s employees in order to meet the constantly evolving compliance requirements. The general counsels and members of the legal departments nominated in the GC Powerlist Brazil Teams 2017 do have the necessary qualities and skills to handle those difficult tasks.

We from Castro Barros Sobral Gomes Advogados are proud and delighted by the invitation to again sponsor this extremely important initiative, dedicated to pay a just and absolutely necessary homage to in-house legal teams that really strive to make a difference and achieved such a goal with flying colours.

Congratulations to you all.

2 GC POWERLIST | BRAZIL TEAMS

José Augusto LealSenior partnerTel: +21 2132 1802Fax: +21 2132 1856

[email protected]

Contact Information:

Av. Rio Branco 110 Rua do Rocio, 291 14º Andar 11º Andar 20040-001 04552-000 Rio de Janeiro– RJ São Paulo – SP

www.cbsg.com.br

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.cbsg.com.br/

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COMMERCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

AlmAp BBDO

One of the most celebrated advertising agencies in Brazil, Almap BBDO takes on a range of clients and has an enviable reputation for creative excellence and success in growing clients’ brands. Augusto Cesar Fortuna, legal manager, leads the three-person in-house legal team at Almap BBDO and details how the teams main goal, ensuring that its ‘work was considered part of the mechanism of the business and is not just looked to when a legal matter appears’, has been a success. He and his team have also worked hard to innovate, and have ‘developed contract management software with an IT partner, especially for film production contracts’, a project that has led to significant efficiency improvements to the team’s day-to-day activities. The team has been involved in the legal support of some particularly glamorous and high-profile projects, as Fortuna outlines. ‘Giving legal support to the global campaign of one of the main sponsors of FIFA World Cup 2014 and Rio Olympic Games 2016, both held in Brazil, were particular highlights’, he explains. ‘All the advertising campaigns of this sponsor were created by Almap BBDO, and we provided a huge volume of legal approvals and contracts (film production, licencing and image agreements), which were executed worldwide’.

IpsOs BrAsIl

The French global market research and a consulting firm Ipsos has been operating in Brazil under the Ipsos Brasil subsidiary for almost 20 years. Assisting the company’s business of delivering accurate, relevant and easy to use information to its clients is a talented and experienced legal team headed by legal director Ana Cássia Elias Mercante. She is a highly regarded figure in Brazil’s in-house community and is supported by lawyer Carolina Bonatto Fairbanks when handling Ipsos’ contractual and restructuring efforts. The newly formed team is recognised for having quickly integrated into the company’s structure whilst assisting Ipsos Brasil on a high volume of contracts and transactions.

CIelO

One of the ten largest Brazilian corporations in terms of market value, Cielo is the leading player within the electronic payments segment in Latin America. Since 2015 the Cielo legal function has been headed by general counsel Louangela Bianchini Colquhoun, and supporting her in the department is legal officer Paula Solera Ramon Kavaleski who has a wealth of experience having worked for the company since 1999. Also in the team are trusted legal managers Julio Cesar Caciatori Martins who is responsible for civil, tax, criminal and labour litigation areas, and Cinthia Martins da Costa, who focuses on the regulatory area. Working within a highly regulated sector, the legal team has gained recognition for assisting the company in dealing with the country’s antitrust regulators and understanding Cielo’s business objectives in light of reforms made by the Brazilian government and central bank to the financial services industry, in an attempt to end recession whilst agreeing deals with online marketplaces.

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ACCenture

Global professional services firm Accenture is supported in the Latin American region via a legal team arranged according to a matrix structure with several legal practice areas, each with their own head, reporting to a function lead. Based in Brazil and assuming responsibility for coordinating the department as the most senior lawyer is Jose Moscati, in his role of managing director – associate general counsel, contracting, Latin America. Moscati further illustrates the innovative and recognised nature of the team’s role, explaining how it was involved in ‘the largest digital transformations in the market within all large industries in Latin America, from digital banks, to high-tech agriculture with the use of drones’. Alongside Katia Porto, who heads contract management in Latin America and Iberia, and leads a team of 70 legal staff, the team is extremely efficient in its operations having recently undergone a specialisation and segmentation process. This process took the form of the division of the group according to areas of expertise and involved segmentation to divide the work according to complexity and value to make sure the most appropriate lawyer in terms of seniority or expertise is involved with a piece of legal work at any given time. The effect of this has ‘helped the company to save millions of dollars while enabling it to rotate to digital and new technologies that require deep legal expertise’ according to Moscati. Team members that are particularly noted include Juan Fagalde, the lead of an Accenture service centre that enabled optimization of Accenture’s legal services in Argentina in addition to André M. Sant’Anna, who leads some of Accenture’s largest operations in business process outsourcing in Latin America, and is an ‘expert’ on automation in services. Carolina Martin is also highlighted for her role in ‘most complex bank automations’ in the mortgage field.

COMMERCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES


GrupO ABrIl

Brazilian media conglomerate Grupo Abril is the leading and most influential group of communication, education and logistics in Latin America. Since its foundation as a small publisher in 1950, the company has become increasingly relevant to Brazil’s publishing culture, becoming the second largest magazine in the world with over one million issues printed every week and an established digital presence comprising of 73 websites. The legal function is led by general counsel Arnaldo Tibyriçá who stresses: ‘In Brazil, lawyers don’t review the editorial material before it goes public. The right way to do this is to educate the managers and teams’. It is to this end that the legal team is key in educating internal teams and managers to avoid risk in regards to finalising editorial material, fervently emphasising a culture of education that aligns with the ethical and moral values of the company. Constantly introducing innovations to the company, most recently the team has been behind creating a user manual of the legal department which informs the company about potential liabilities that they can bring to the company and themselves, subsequently resulting in the reduction of litigation. Made up of 13 lawyers, four interns and two support staff the legal team has recently downsized its headcount as a result of the economic environment, nevertheless enabling them to be more effective and efficient when dealing with the broad range of areas their clients bring to the table, mainly including finance, media and logistics. The legal team has created tools and processes that have helped intervention within internal clients’ organisation. Considered a very ‘united’ function, the legal team gets recognition from the company for its relentless passion and interest in educating the company on topics involving legal risk and media law. Tibyriçá adds: ‘I’m very happy to say that the legal team is very united and very in sync and enthusiastic. This is not easy but we don’t consider it just a business, but a cause, and we are happy to be here.’

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AjInOmOtO DO BrAsIl

The legal team of the Japanese multinational food and chemical corporation Ajinomoto do Brasil brings together all of the company’s professionals involved in legal, intellectual property and government relations into a single, integrated and strong unit. With the recent standardisation of internal policies and procedures and the establishment of a centralised and integrated communication flow, the department has transformed into a ‘fundamental and strategic’ element of Ajinomoto’s future in Brazil according to Ricardo Sasaki, corporate legal director. To support the business effectively, in the past several years, the team has introduced a number of innovations, including non-litigious mechanisms to resolve disputes. ‘We are working hard to change a culture of litigation to a culture of conciliation, through which the parties involved can achieve positive results , avoiding loss of time, money and breakdown of relationships,’ Sasaki shares. ‘With the introduction of non-litigation mechanisms to resolve disputes, the legal team has been reducing the total number of lawsuits of the company and consequently contributing to reduce the astonishing number of lawsuits in Brazilian courts that consume a very high cost and burden the entire Brazilian society’. The team also coordinated, prepared and implemented a system of policies and regulations that brought optimisation, standardisation and agility of all the processes and procedures of the activities of the three divisions within the company. Ajinomoto’s legal unit in Brazil features a number of prominent lawyers, such as the aforementioned Ricardo Sasaki, Marsal Villas Boas and Pâmela Hirai, who are known industry-wide for their outstanding skills and experience.

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BRAZIL TEAMS | GC POWERLIST 7


ArCOs DOurADOs COmérCIO De AlImentOs (mCDOnAlD’s)

Chief legal officer and GC Powerlist: Brazil inclusion in 2016 Boris Gris leads a legal team of 13 lawyers, three trainees, two apprentices and two administrative staff for Arcos Dourados Comércio de Alimentos, the Brazilian part of Arcos Dorados, the largest McDonald’s franchisee in the world in terms of sales and restaurants. In terms of its day-to-day work, the team has the goal of providing legal services as to assure stability of all company projects, making business feasible and mitigating risks. The team has recently been preoccupied with reshaping and implementing legal contracts related to the company’s new franchising model, and has also overseen implementation of a new division especially dedicated to labour law over the last two years, recognising the requirement to devolve and add additional support in the necessary practice area. Innovative in nature, Gris explains the team has recently adopted key risk indicators that ‘manage and deal with litigation and important issues, replacing the traditional contingency amounts oriented approach’. Also in line with this innovative spirit, the team has been ‘essential’ in supporting the challenge of a new model of restaurant, the first of which is located in São Paulo. Gris claims that ‘as the new restaurant involves a change of the way services are provided, the manner employees are engaged, the way products are taxed and the great impact on marketing and advertisement campaigns, [the] legal team was essential in supporting the big challenge launched by the company and had made feasible such material change in the company’s business model’. In describing the team’s relationship with the upper management of the business, Gris says the legal team ‘interacts widely, openly, transparently and very closely to the CEO and senior management, creating and maintaining a healthy and respectful interdependency culture. Ideas are exchanged and challenges are shared in order to achieve the company’s goals’.

GrupO BOtICárIO

Led by legal and compliance manager Priscila Jacober Pasqualin, the Grupo Boticário legal team has a rich pool of expertise working in cosmetic business units, and is at the forefront of initiatives surrounding entrepreneurship, sustainability, innovation, ethics and integrity. With a history of awareness-raising and nature conservation actions since 1990, Grupo Boticário has over 5,700 employees who are aligned with this ethos. As part of its highly ethical and passionate workforce, the legal function is a huge driver in adding value to this ethos as well as providing excellent legal and commercial support. Possessing a wide range of experience in the corporate governance, international law, tax law and sustainability and ethics areas, the team is actively involved at all stages and passionate about the company’s philosophy. Most recently the team has been at the forefront of addressing issues of environmental licensing in Brazil.

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eleCtrOlux

Camilo Wittica is the vice president, legal and government affairs Latin America for Electrolux, the multinational home appliance manufacturer, which has a presence in major Latin American countries such as Brazil, Chile and Argentina, and is the market leader in a large number of product categories in appliances. In line with the variety of Electrolux´s product offerings in Latin America, the legal function in the region is multidisciplinary, and across the company’s qualified legal staff there is ample experience and talent to deal with issues spanning various practice areas including government affairs, risk management and intellectual property law. Brazil is Electrolux’s largest market in the region and represents around 50% of the total Latin American market for appliances, and legal support comes out of the country in the form of a function that provides comprehensive and timely support. In addition to the aforementioned Wittica, senior legal counsel Renato Gelsi Alves and group legal counsel Luciana Santiago Faria were both highlighted for their excellent legal knowledge and commercially-focused support during the research process.

HAsBrO

American multinational Hasbro is the third largest toy maker in the world with revenues of approximately $4.45bn. The company’s Brazilian legal team is well equipped to deal with all litigious matters, boasting an aptitude for international law and possessing high levels of inter jurisdictional experience. The legal team helps with the management of all legal and compliance activities in Latin America including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Argentina reporting to the international legal vice president in London. The most senior Brazilian lawyer at Hasbro is director, regional legal and government affairs, Taciana Fazzolari, who coordinates the activities of one lawyer in Mexico and enables cooperation with external lawyers in Latin America. A large part of the legal teams’ work is based around intellectual property matters and the management of registration assisting with the opposition and defence of local brands in Brazil and Latin America additionally supporting the licensing group on contract negotiations and implementation of anti-counterfeiting strategy in the region. The team has also recently focused on the implementation and enforcement of the company’s compliance program, coordinating investigations of possible breaches and determination of corrective measures. The function places a great deal of importance on training deployment for employees and third parties on business conduct, anticorruption and compliance matters. Legal also oversees the marketing aspect of a number of projects, guiding the artwork, packaging and commercial promotions review and approval. Having become a main part of the consumer affairs, regulatory and public relations group; legal represent the company before Conar, a non-governmental organisation that regulates the advertising sector in Brazil, assisting with the launch of a number of Hasbro products and merchandise.

CONSUMER PRODUCTS


lOjAs renner

Tracing its origins back to 1965, Lojas Renner has grown into one of the largest retail operations in Brazil through its Renner, Camicado and YouCom stores. In total, it employs over 17,000 people and boasts highly competent officers in the upper echelons of its business hierarchy and the legal team is no exception. Legal support at the company is led by Carlos Barroso, who has been general counsel since the start of 2016. Barroso has previous experience of senior in-house legal work having been legal director at industrials company TUPY, and uses his immense experience to inform members of the executive management of Lojas Renner of legal considerations to strategic decisions. The Lojas Renner legal team has helped the company to achieve an important milestone recently; in September 2017 the company announced the opening of its first overseas store, a location in Montevideo. This achievement required the legal team to display its significant cross-border skills, and is an example of its effect empowering the company to take its operations to new markets.

nAturA COsmétICOs

One of the leading personal care, beauty and cosmetics providers in Brazil, Natura Cosméticos is traded on the São Paulo stock exchange, enjoyed $4bn in total revenue for 2016 and employs around 17,000 individuals. The team reports in to head of legal and compliance Itamar Gaino Filho, and legal manager Renata Campos explains how the team has been taking on an ever increasing set of responsibilities: ‘In the past two years the team has aggregated the environmental and real estate areas in addition to our previous roles’. As to how they have managed such a varied workload while continuing to support business objectives, Campos explains that the team has coordinated extensively with other departments. ‘The team acts closely with the innovation and marketing departments in order to guarantee IP protection and take advantage of Natura’s IP rights worldwide’ she explains, ‘and we are also part of a multidisciplinary internal group that analyses and recommends projects and partnerships from conception to implementation’. This has allowed the Natura Cosméticos legal team to support the company on a number of notable projects recently, as Campos details. ‘The renewal of “NATURA” as a well-known trademark has been particularly rewarding’, she notes, ‘as has the acquisition of The Body Shop and our participation on many other projects related to environmental commitments’.

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GrupO pãO De AçúCAr (GpA)

GPA is Brazil’s leading retailer of consumer goods ranging from general merchandise, electronic products and home appliances among others. With annual income of R$41.5bn, it is the second biggest retail company in Latin America by revenue and the second largest online retailer in Brazil. Assisting the experienced group general counsel Fernando Merino in this distinguished institution is a large legal function comprised of talented members such as head of legal - legal director Claudia Karpat, legal manager Obadia Azulay and legal director Fernanda Basso Nabuco. The team has been commended for its role in handling a number of labour related litigations in 2016. More recently, members of the team were involved in a negotiating a deal with Office Midia OOH in an effort that will see GPA launch an unprecedented media platform in Brazil by displaying the latest technology in advertising space.

stAples

Roberta Codignoto is the head of legal and compliance, Latin America, for Staples, and has accumulated over 19 years as a legal counsel. She leads the Staples legal team in Brazil and is able to rely on a team that instils a great deal of confidence in its business partners when approaching all complex legal matters faced by the business. Established in 1985, Staples is an American multinational office supply retailing corporation, with over 1,500 stores in North America and over the years has worked hard to establish a powerful brand across the world. The Brazilian legal function has taken on responsibilities for compliance related matters and monitoring and implementing of internal policies, furthermore being central to the enforcement of the code of ethics as well as performing ethics investigations when needed. Wearing several hats at once the team serves as a legal knowledge centre within the human resources areas, ensuring compliance with labour laws as well as risk mapping, analysis and preparation of legal documents, internal policies and disciplinary sanctions.

VAleO

Valeo is a global automotive parts company with a major presence in Brazil centred on its multiple major plants in the country. It has a €16.5bn-revenue and a particularly notable production line in providing headlights to major automobile manufacturers, including Renault, Volkswagem, Fiat, Peugeot and Mitsubishi. Negotiating with these high-profile names in the automotive industry, and providing all other relevant legal support to the company’s activities, provides the Valeo legal team in Brazil with much to take charge of, and gives it ample opportunity to showcase its excellent abilities. The team is led by Paula Scandiuzzi Bichuete, deputy general counsel South America who has been with the company for over five years. She has proven her worth in senior in-house legal roles previously, as she was head of legal for major entertainment company T4F – Time For Fun, and her experience at the top level of corporate life make her an ideal person to lead Valeo’s legal response to emerging challenges.

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rB

With a team of eight staff broken down into five lawyers and three non-legal staff, Ana Carolina Pescarmona is the head of legal and compliance for multinational consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser (RB) in Brazil. RB recently acquired Hypermarcas’ Brazilian condom and lubricants business which, in addition to the Jontex and Olla brands, is said to be transformative for RB’s sexual wellbeing category in Brazil. Pescarmona is proud of her team’s internal recognition, stating that the legal team is ‘recognised as an important business partner and [is] very engaged with the leadership team as fundamental part of the decision making process’. Operating with this close relationship to upper management, the team also enjoys relations with other business units and is expected to not only guide and advise on corporate strategic decisions but to ensure the ‘reinforcement of the compliance mind-set all over the company’. In adding this value to the business, Pescarmona is keen to emphasize the innovative tool implemented that ‘communicates and monitors all new challenges to the brands that were impacted due to competitor’s strategies, which was fundamental to demonstrate how the legal department can add value to the business’. The aforementioned acquisitions of the Jontex and Olla brands, in addition to adding the Naldecon, Dermodex and Luftal brands to RB’s portfolio have all been individual successes for the legal team, but its impact has been felt in other ways. Recent innovations by the team include a new compliance program, new methods of face-to-face training with all business areas and a new electronic system to deal with contracts and the management of litigation across the company.


BrAVAnte

With more than 50 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, working in the areas of maritime support, port support, shipbuilding, ship repair and environmental protection, Bravante has consolidated its presence in all business segments in which it operates. Despite the small size of the legal team, Bravante’s three lawyers have each made a considerable impact to the company. Legal manager and head of the function Gabriela Laufer explains: ‘Considering we are such a small team in a company that has more than two thousand employees and four different business areas, there is a lot of work to be done. We all have many tasks do to everyday so I incentivise communication among the team, so that we are alerted of each other tasks and may help each other’. Bravante went through a substantial corporate restructuring process at the end of 2015 and to reduce liabilities and expenses, legal has recently internalised and centralised all of the administrative processes and communications with their biggest client, Petrobras. Laufer is described by peers as a ‘brilliant lawyer with vast experience in corporate consultancy and commercial litigation’, and she concedes that the centralisation process was a huge undertaking on their part, ‘considering these tasks were previously attributed to three different areas and many different professionals’. She adds: ‘We are now able to avoid contractual penalties that, in the past, had been overlooked or accepted by the respective operational area’. The team has also made a huge effort to reach out to all areas of the business, in order to remediate a distance that many managers had towards the legal department in connection with possible preventive actions and measures, in which it can be of assistance. ‘We now feel that the different corporate areas are more connected and we are generally able to avoid future liabilities toward clients, tax liabilities or regulatory issues which, in the past, had been the product of lack of communication between the areas and lack of consultation to the legal department’. This incredibly proactive team continues to add value and work to push the company’s strategic agenda in the maritime sector.

CpFl enerGIA

CPFL Energia, Brazil’s largest private electric utility company, serves residential, industrial and commercial customers around the country through operating wind, biomass-powered thermal, solar, and hydroelectric power plants. The company boasts a strong legal team known throughout the market, particularly for the strength of its M&A practice. In June 2016, the team made a tangible impact with its involvement in the purchase of a power distributor owned by AES Corp in Porto Alegre for $486m, in the first strategic acquisition in Brazil’s electricity sector for two years. Sources point out the team’s ability to work out alongside colleagues from other departments to ensure project completion and to explain complex legal terminology in a clear manner. Besides supporting M&A and green energy projects across Brazil, CPFL swiftly negotiates, analyses and drafts all contracts and provides business-centric advice on intellectual property, real estate, environmental matters, compliance and corporate law.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES


eletrOBrAs

Led by chief legal and administrative officer Alexandre Aniz, the legal team of Eletrobras, the largest utilities company in Latin America, has recently been involved in supporting the company’s significant asset sale program. In addition to the team’s work on a plethora of transactions over the last few years, external nominators point out the team’s ‘diligence and flexibility’ in facilitating Electrobras’ sale of CELG to the Italian utility company Enel for $647m. With lawyers working in various locations across Brazil, the team has made an impression with its strength in the regulatory, environmental and intellectual property areas. The aforementioned Aniz, in particular, has been singled out for his deep understanding of the specifics of the Electrobras business, as well as for his long-term planning and ability to influence business strategy.

enel GrOup BrAzIl

Led by highly esteemed legal director Antonio Basilio Pires e Albuquerque, Enel Group Brazil’s legal team has supported the business on a number of marquee transactions in the last year. Particularly noteworthy was the team’s support of the $640m acquisition and privatisation of CELG, a deal that increased Enel’s Brazilian customer base from seven million to 10 million, while also increasing the number of customers served by the Group globally to approximately 65 million. Other key transactional achievements for the team over the last year include work on a transmission line auction, several renewable energy auctions and a fundamental deal with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Basilio states the team has embraced a culture of ‘intellectual independence’, and is always open to new ideas and perspectives to drive the business forward. Recently, the team introduced an innovative project with the intention to ‘reduce the number of active litigations as well as reduce the costs involved in them, combining customer information, history of lawsuits and statistics,’ he articulates. ‘It involves the implementation of a system that identifies models of information analysis and defines profiles of target audiences to reduce the number of new lawsuits and increase the success in the processes already in place, thus having the ability to predict and analyse our universe of clients. In order to do so, the project is divided in two models, the first being the analysis of the probability of a client initiating a lawsuit in the face of the company, and the second the analysis of the probability of the client succeeding in the claims already in place’. Comprised of 65 employees, the team features a number of highly experienced lawyers, such as its leader Antonio Basilio Pires e Albuquerque, as well as Ana Claudia Gonçalves Rebello, Déborah Meirelles Rosa Brasil, Cristine de Magalhães Marcondes, Sergio Salluh and Maria Eduarda Fisher.

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lIGHt

Committed to the sustainability and growth of Rio de Janeiro, the Light Group has been involved for more than 100 years in the generation, commercialisation and distribution of electricity in Rio de Janeiro as well as developing solutions for the sector. Once a state-owned company, Light is today formed by a holding company, Light SA, which controls four other companies in addition to an institute. Chief legal officer, Fernando Antonio Fegunda Reis, heads Light’s diverse and talented legal team whose other notable members include legal manager for general litigation Tiago Câmara and senior lawyers Ilan Leibel Swartzman (for criminal and civil rights) and Kalhil Kalume (for business consulting, corporate law and financial markets). The department as a whole has been highly commended for working on a number of transactions whilst seamlessly handling legal matters on the company’s day-to-day activities.

FuGrO BrAsIl

The Netherlands headquartered Fugro is among the most sophisticated energy service and equipment providers in the world, with particular strength in the offshore oil and gas field. The company has significant presence in Brazil and is the major provider of deep sea divers for the offshore market and one of the most relevant remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) providers. The company’s legal function in Brazil features outstanding lawyer Geisa Campos, who is well known for her deep knowledge of the market and its legal challenges, having gathered over almost 15 years of experience in the oil and gas sector. Campos comments that the team is ‘one of the most specialised in-house corporate legal teams in the offshore diving sector’ and can point to recent experience dealing with a ‘wide variety’ of transactions, from the implementation and development of vessel construction projects to dealing with union strikes. In addition to senior legal counsel Juliana Condack and an apprentice, Campos, as the most senior lawyer at the company in her role of legal manager, has been praised for dealing with the Brazilian authorities and Fugro’s key client Petrobras, devising creative solutions to overcome the hurdles of bureaucracy and providing top-quality legal advice to executives in Brazil and abroad. Indicative of the outstanding nature of the team, Fugro Brasil’s country manager for the marine business Andy Seymour comments: ‘[Campos] and the legal team bring a great deal to our organisation; they are very active business partners and have developed the trust and confidence of all the management team with their pragmatic and highly enthusiastic style in bringing key legal issues to the table, whilst at the same time taking care of the minutiae of the details that would otherwise burden us unnecessarily’.



nOrte enerGIA

Norte Energia is responsible for the construction and operation of the giant Belo Monte Dam complex, the fourth-largest hydroelectric dam complex in the world by installed capacity and a strategically important project for the Brazilian economy. The six-person Norte Energia legal team is led by general counsel Roberto Federici and has had a significant impact on the successful progress on the project. Federici has been supported throughout the team’s endeavours by Luiz Otavio Vilella and Thiago Bandeira, corporate legal manager and operational legal manager respectively, with the Norte Energia legal team having a major impact on the dam starting its first power-generating turbines in 2016. Federici mentions the team’s demanding workload in support of the project: they have had to ‘structure project finance, deal with challenging EPC´s, highly sophisticated agreements, complex litigations and arbitrations along with managing the environmental matters’. When handling these myriad issues, Federici is clear that the team never loses sight of its overarching goal, that of ‘anticipating problems and providing objective solutions’ for the company.

rIO enerGy

Committed to sustainable energy, Rio Energy works on the development, construction and operation of renewable energy power plants with the highest quality standards, creating both social and economic value for local communities and stakeholders. Having developed, in less than five years, a portfolio of 485MW of operated and in-construction wind generation projects, the company has relied on the excellent work of its legal team to carry out its ambitious plans. General counsel Lucas Quevedo explains that amongst its other achievements, the legal team has ‘developed, together with the real estate team, a process for land-title regularisation that has proven very efficient. Real estate is a key element in the development of renewables, more particularly wind and solar projects, and this process has enhanced the pace in our developments and significantly reduced our exposure to litigation in this area’. Also involved in a number of social projects, most recently the legal team has been central to creating a strong legal backdrop to support its renowned work in the sector. The legal team strongly support the company goal of being transparent, sustainable and committed to governance and compliance throughout their operations. Staffed with outstanding legal professionals, coming in for particular praise include legal manager Nathalia Jereissati and two specialists - Pedro Machado, Sr. and Maria Eduarda Tisi, all of whom have ‘contributed immensely contributed to the team’s success’.

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petrOrIO

‘Over the last two years, PetroRio has undergone a major turnaround, which was only possible due to a strong legal team. During this period, we sought to strengthen the team and internalise demands, reducing costs with external advisors. We have also implemented KPI’s and aggressive goals for the team, shifting the nature of the legal team from simple advisors and supporting area to a business area and partner to the company, assuming responsibility for the effective implementation of strategies’ says Fabrício Zaluski, legal manager at oil and gas producer PetroRio. The team has enabled PetroRio to become one of the largest oil and gas exploration and production companies in Brazil, and this status was achieved through huge changes in the company structure that started in 2014. With four lawyers and an intern alongside him, Zaluski has led the team through this period of change which has led to highly successful results such as ‘a more closer and effective relationship between the legal team and the other areas and also with the external advisors, always chasing better results for the company’. Keen to ensure high standards of legal knowledge across the company, the team started a legal training project within PetroRio involving, amongst other things, presentations and training sessions by the legal team members to internal clients working within other areas of the company. ‘This reduced the legal demands arising from operational areas, once they became more aware of the risks and how to mitigate them during the negotiation phase or by understanding the contractual obligations. This reduced unnecessary e-mail exchanges and strengthened the company’s position to the external public’ says Zaluski. Speaking of the team’s culture of openness and collaboration, Zaluski explains that team members are ‘encouraged to speak freely and share their ideas, irrespective of their position, everyone is encouraged to interact with the CEO and all the directors and board members’.



rAIzen

Highly recommended for its cohesion and meritocratic work culture, the legal team at the core of the Brazilian telecommunications company Raizen has recently provided assistance on some high profile transactions. For instance, in 2017 the team impressed with its participation in the creation of a global joint venture for the sale of sugar between Raízen and Wilmar (Raw Sugar), as well as its participation in Raizen’s first emission of US bonds amounting to $500m. Led by Raphaella Gomes, a well-known Brazilian lawyer with over 14 years of experience, the team has also gathered attention for its decisive influence on key internal projects, such as the creation of Raizen’s M&A area and the design of all applicable processes and work streams, as well as the design and implementation of Raizen’s compliance program and the definition of the company’s ethics and compliance plan. When asked to describe the team’s culture and ethos, Gomes shares: ‘We strive to deliver the best available advice, with adequate cost, applying innovation and inspiring and creating an ethic and fair environment within our organisation and with our external stakeholders and costumers. Our team does not accept doing things in the same way they were done before, and we try to challenge ourselves in doing things differently, more efficiently and in innovative manners. In doing so, we strive for setting a good example by means of our ethic and fair conduct in all the things we do’.

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sABesp

Sabesp is one of Brazil’s largest organisations, and is recognised as the largest waste management company in the world by market capitalisation. In addition to this impressive accolade, it accrued $4.2bn in revenues for 2016 and has around 15,000 employees on the back of its extensive water supply and sewage management initiatives; for example, the company provides water to 26.7 million people. Tax lawyer Gustavo Saroba Mariano ensures that legal and tax matters are closely related at Sabesp, and his specialist skills, gained over 15 years with the company, ensure that both these areas are well looked after. Elsewhere in the legal department, legal manager Wagner Mota similarly brings a large amount of experience to his role, having spent six and a half years supporting Sabesp’s operations.

sHell BrAzIl - GlOBAl lItIGAtIOn lAtAm AnD CArrIBeAn

Shell Brazil has recently embarked on a number of expansive projects, investing $10bn in Brazil over five years owing to the increased opportunities for foreign companies in Brazil’s oil industry in recent years. Recent legislation that increases the role of private oil companies in the tapping of vast off-shore oil deposits in the subsalt layer has encouraged Shell to establish itself as the largest foreign investor in Brazil. With its renowned robust global presence, Shell Brazil has a global litigation team to match, handling all disputes faced by the company and representing the Shell Group in relationships with co-ventures. Managed by managing counsel litigation, Gabriel Alves da Costa, the team of 11 professionals is based in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Argentina, handling the Shell Group’s dispute docket in Latin America and the Caribbean region. The team is involved in litigation, arbitration, administrative and mediation matters in a variety of areas including budgeting, engaging and managing outside counsel, experts and other resources. Responsible for communicating and updating the business on significant development in the matters handled, the legal function recommend legal provisions and work with auditors to report significant litigation risks within the Shell Group Control framework. The team collaborate closely with other internal departments in legal and other functions including external relations, investor relations and government relations in the management of disputes.



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B3

Brasil Bolsa Balcão – more commonly known as B3 – is the Brazilian Stock Exchange, and owing to a merger between BM & FBovespa and Cetip in a deal worth $3.9bn, became the world’s fifth largest stock exchange in March 2017. With offices in Rio de Janeiro, New York City, Shanghai, and London, and assets worth $13bn, the B3 business is present in many of the world’s most important financial centres and is at the forefront of the Brazilian economy. The exchange is a self-regulatory entity that operates under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission and such requires astute and swift regulatory knowledge on the part of its lawyers. A team with several legal managers and specialists, the team is rich in experience and knowledge of administrative law, regulatory affairs and antitrust affairs. All of this is crucial in protecting B3 in its prominent position in global capital markets, ensuring its reputation is protected and making Brazil an attractive place for investors.

BAnCO DO BrAsIl

Banco do Brasil, the second largest bank in Latin America by assets, provides a wide assortment of products and services for individuals, companies, and the government of Brazil. Providing counsel surrounding the full scope of the bank’s activities, the legal team works at the forefront of Brazil’s financial services sector. Recently, the team has captured attention in the industry with its work to support Banco do Brasil’s cost cutting drive aimed at weathering Brazil’s recession. In 2016, the bank announced plans to close 402 branches and downsize a further 379, while concentrating on digital channels and pushing its internet banking offerings. Such a significant change in focus has required equally significant efforts from the legal team, which has increased its overall importance within the corporate structure by advising on this new strategy. The team’s superior internal organisation has enabled it to cope effectively with a growing workload, whilst seamlessly supporting key internal projects.

BAnk OF AmerICA merrIll lynCH

Bank of America dates its presence in Latin America back to 1951, when it opened its first office in Mexico City. Today, the bank has corporate offices in six Latin American countries- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Despite Brazil’s recession, its investment banking arm, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, recently experienced a stellar year, emerging as a winner in the fight for investment banking fees and clients in the country. The firm attracted more fees from M&A and debt and equity underwriting than any competing firm in Brazil in 2016, with the exception of Banco Itau BBA, and recorded revenue growth of 15%. These achievements would have been impossible without the work of the bank’s highly organised São Paulo based legal team, which is at the heart of all of the bank’s projects and transactions across its corporate finance and trading divisions. Individual lawyers highlighted by nominators in this year’s research include Cristiane Bernardes Antunes Quiterio, Fernanda Iacia and Nathalia Haddad Rodrigues.

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BrOOkFIelD BrAzIl

For Canadian company Brookfield Infrastructure, its ability to handle complex transactions is essential to its contrarian-thinking strategy of investing in regions where capital is scarce, such as Brazil and Latin America in general. Its Brazilian legal team is headed by vice president and lead counsel Fernando Ziziotti and its capacity to analyse and mitigate the critical legal and compliance risks of often multiple simultaneous transactions ‘is the result of its model of global teams, where specialised knowledge is shared cross-border, where needed’, according to Ziziotti. Joana de Marsillac, who is vice president, compliance risk and operations for the company’s Brazilian business, joined the legal team in 2012 to support Ziziotti and the legal team in the wake of new opportunities to permit a targeted focus on corruption risk, both regarding new transactions and Brookfield Brazil’s existing portfolio. ‘The team’s commitment to bringing compliance to the forefront of Brookfield’s acquisition strategy has helped contribute to the firm’s success in Brazil and Latin America more broadly in recent years’, says de Marsillac. Another important member of the team is legal manger Bernardo Taier who has strong experience of working in capital markets and M&A lawyer Jandra Muñoz Rivera. The team has successfully executed some of the largest M&A transactions in the region, including the $5.2bn acquisition of NTS Petrobras gas pipelines, the stalking horse bid for the Invepar stake owned by the distressed construction conglomerate OAS and the investment of approximately $2.8bn to create a 4,200km electricity transmission platform through a joint venture with the ACS Group. Other impressive deals the team demonstrated its skill on are the acquisition of a majority stake in Peruvian toll road consortium, Rutas de Lima from Odebrecht, and Brookfield´s $768m acquisition of the largest private water and sewage company in Brazil, Odebrecht Ambiental. Summing up the legal team’s outlook Ziziotti says, ‘Brookfield Infrastructure’s small but highly skilled in house legal and compliance team in Latin America has its main base in São Paulo and leverages Brookfield´s global and local knowhow and the support of top external advisors to efficiently deliver on an active M&A pipeline and manage the legal issues of a significant portfolio in the region’.

BrADesCO

Bradesco is one of Brazil’s largest and most historic banking and finance companies, with a revenue of $50bn and being listed on the Brazilian, New York and Madrid Stock Exchanges. A wide range of legal support is needed owing to the bank’s offering of a range of financial services that span the internet banking, insurance, pension, credit card and savings bonds products and its international presence. The bank also provides personal and commercial loans, as well as leasing services markets to its customers in Brazil and certain international locations. Often at the centre of large-scale and large-value disputes a large financial institution such as Bradesco has the potential to be involved in, the legal team at the company contains high calibre lawyers including previous GC Powerlist: Brazil inclusion Johan Albino Ribeiro, the current general counsel of the bank and lead lawyer responsible for the overall management of the company’s legal professionals.

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j.p. mOrGAn

J.P. Morgan, a global leader in financial services, has had a presence in Brazil since the 1960s, when both J.P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan Bank opened local offices. To handle legal matters for its vast operations and services in the country, the company has recruited some Brazil’s best in-house lawyers. As a result the legal function at J.P. Morgan is able to deploy experienced legal experts in key positions. Executive director of the legal department Lucas Mello, a professional with over 20 years of experience, is responsible for litigations, company secretarial work and corporate agreements. Márcio Bonfiglioli holds a key position as head of legal and compliance as do Solange Mendonca and Rafael Matos who both occupy vice president positions in the legal department. In 2016 members of the team worked on the sale Brazil private-equity and hedge-fund company Gavea Investimentos back to the firm’s founding partners, which include former central bank president Arminio Fraga. The team is recognised for its contribution to the company on deals such as this and also reaching an agreement with the Tribunal of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) in the same year.

GOlDmAn sACHs

Goldman Sachs in Brazil prides itself on maintaining an elite in-house legal team composed of the best and brightest. As in the company’s offices throughout the world, Goldman Sachs Brazil looks to promote internally as much as possible, which leads to a group of employees with a high level of experience who are intimately acquainted with business practices across the group; the Goldman Sachs legal team in Brazil therefore possesses excellent business knowledge along with outstanding legal expertise. This also results in the team having a very low turnover of staff and high morale, both excellent attributes that allow it to rise to the myriad challenges faced by the high-profile financial giant that it serves. Managing director – head of Goldman Sachs Brazil legal department Ricardo Mourao took on his role with the Goldman Sachs legal department after a seven-year spell with Velloza, Girotto e Lindenbojm Advogados, during which he rose to the rank of partner. The reputation Mourao has carved out for success in moulding and supporting the business objectives of Goldman Sachs in Brazil is indicative of the top-level talent available throughout the organisation; he is just one example of many in the Goldman Sachs in-house legal team who share such qualities.

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ItAú unIBAnCO

Itaú Unibanco, the largest bank in South America and 16th largest bank globally by market value (with revenue for 2016 totalling $50bn), maintains a formidable legal department in order to deal with the myriad challenges that the company faces. With 450 lawyers in the legal function, Itaú Unibanco retains one of the largest in-house legal forces in the world, but given the depth of talent available to the team, it is not just a matter of quantity over quality. Vice president – legal Claudia Politanski goes into the team’s structure: ‘While for labour and consumer legal matters we are one of a kind, we divide ourselves into a consulting group and a litigation group, for these matters, and have undergone major innovations in both of these areas. For instance, for litigation we have taken the approach that we should industrialise the process of consumer disputes, and have honed this to a fine degree to the point where disputes have been reduced 20% overall’. Innovation is at the heart of all that the Itaú Unibanco legal team does, and Politanski explains that this is excellent in attracting the best young legal talent available. ‘When our consulting team is thinking about how to structure a product from a legal standpoint, we talk to consumer protection agencies, the primary regulator and many other relevant parties to come up with a way of approaching legal matters that create market trends. This is one of the reasons individuals are attracted to us. We have taken the responsibility for organising the market in terms of legal risk’, she explains. Given the level of talent that Itaú Unibanco can attract, the team is able to be selective about who is admitted to its ranks, and prizes those who have financial and banking expertise in addition to legal skills. ‘We have always looked for extremely talented people who have done their legal training in top law schools’, Politanski explains, ‘but once they come to work with us we are very much concerned with their overall knowledge, as we believe that for working in a bank it does not suffice just to be a lawyer. You have to understand how the banking system works, how the accounting system works, advanced quantitative skills and other areas that set us apart from most in-house legal professionals’.

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jll

The American real estate investment management and professional services company JLL dates its presence in Brazil back to 1996, when it opened its first office in the country. Today, the office houses a strong and multidisciplinary legal team that oversees and conducts negotiations for large corporate transactions undertaken by the company. Headed by legal and compliance director Gustavo Biagioli, the department ensures effective legal support to the business and facilitates full compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and company policies, protecting and enhancing the reputation of the company and contributing to strategic growth initiatives. Made up of six lawyers and an administrative assistant, Biagioli states the team has operated amidst a corporate environment affected by increased compliance scrutiny: ‘the biggest recent change [for the team] was the strengthening of compliance practices and focusing on our integrity program that is a reference for the global market’. He adds that in 2016 the team won the “Pro-Ethics Seal”, the ‘most respected national certification of integrity’. Recognising the importance of close interaction between legal and business peers, the team has ‘prioritised the improvement of communication’ and proactively seeking out knowledge with reference to wider business aspects through several initiatives. The team has been involved in ‘recurring meetings, understanding difficulties, opening the minds of colleagues on the need to accept risk as an element of the business, working on solutions that make business feasible, investing time in risk mitigation, leading cases involving multidisciplinary teams and creating simple but effective templates and policies that enable business to be carried out with governance’. Key to all the company’s transactions and a participant in ‘all phases’ from ‘transition, negotiation, signing of contracts, implementation and throughout the term of the contract’. Biagioli describe an instance where the team conducted an administrative proceeding resulting from assessments of Condominium Camargo Correa to ‘obtain a significant reduction of debt by negotiating a settlement’. This involved the review of the ‘relationship manual with the press, establishing rules to be followed by employees when they are in crisis situations and providing all clarifications until the public prosecutor decided to dismiss the charges’. Highlighting particularly outstanding members of the team, Biagioli cites Aline Leme, a ‘key person’ within the team, who helped develop the communication strategy of the department and leads ‘high impact initiatives’ and Tatiana Maillefaud who helped to ‘expand the sales force and win new projects with legal certainty, and assisted with the execution and registration of the Associated Broker Agreement she developed’. Biagioli also mentions the work of Heron Lacerda, who was involved with a ‘concierge portal for condominiums, the tax reduction strategies for clients, and other initiatives that focus on bringing profitability to the business unit, which has been a high impact in terms of the concept that the legal area also must be seen as a revenue generating unit instead of a cost centre only’.


mArsH

Worldwide leading brokerage company Marsh is a multinational corporation and is the leading company of its kind if Brazil, and is serviced by a legal team led by Daniela Frangioni in her role of head of legal and compliance for Brazil and South America for the Marsh group. A commended lawyer and leader, Frangioni was complemented by nominators for her handling of ‘all day-to-day legal aspects of the brokerage business’. The team is heavily involved in M&A projects in Brazil, enabling Marsh to boost not only its footprint on the continent of South America but its reputation in local markets too. A nominating source spoke of the Marsh legal team in Brazil as being market leaders, and Frangioni as having excellent communication skills with key business partners, evincing the culture within the team of staying close to important industry figures: ‘[Frangioni] is constantly interacting with the insurance regulator Susep’. The team is also known within the market for its ‘deep knowledge of the business’ and is ‘fully qualified to assist the commercial and other departments of the company’ according to a private practice source.

mOrGAn stAnley

The most senior lawyer in Brazil for global financials company Morgan Stanley is João Camarota, managing director, head of legal South America and an inclusion in the inaugural GC Powerlist: Brazil in 2016. A legal team with four lawyers supplemented by one intern and one assistant that has become ‘the hub for South American legal issues for Morgan Stanley [and where] the volume of work and internal clients [has] increased significantly’ according to Camarota. The aforementioned work necessitates a hugely detailed knowledge of the local regulatory environment, which means, in Camarota’s words: ‘The legal department is constantly involved in approving new product structures and new business partners. Cross-border regulations have also played a major role in the recent past, and dealing with sometimes incompatible legal provisions demands a lot from in-house counsel’. Staffed with highly competent professionals more than capable of dealing with these issues, Camarota cites the team’s regulatory achievements, including ‘a productive dialogue with local regulators in order to improve the local regulatory environment, with changes that led to the local Exchange being classified as a qualified CCP for US and European purposes and new significant ownership disclosure rules’. Additionally, technical legal support is also offered by the team ‘on the bank products side, [including] the approval of rules that created structured notes in Brazil, and putting in place a very successful local structured note program and participating in IPOs and follow-on offers’. Highlighted for their contributions in particular include executive director Aline Ferreira, who is responsible for most interactions with local regulators and development of new banking and brokerage products, and has been deeply involved and is a reference to new regulatory initiatives in Brazil. Also executive director, Karina Romano is known for her legal support to IPOs and follow-ons, and has been a ‘key participant’ in developing new market practices in relation to research and capital market offerings.

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pentáGOnO s.A. DIstrIBuIDOrA De títulOs e VAlOres mOBIlIárIOs

Founded in 1985, Pentágono S.A. Distribuidora de Títulos e Valores Mobiliários – more commonly referred to as Pentágono - is a highly specialised securities distributor that provides bonds and securities brokerage, alongside offering custodial trustee services. Since 2010 Nathalia Machado Loureiro has headed the Pentágono legal team, which is closely aligned to the company’s subordinated debt operations and more complex project finance structuring activities. Supporting her in the legal team are the experienced in-house lawyers Julia Siggia Amorim and Francisca Cândida Reis, both of whom joined the company in 2015. Recent activities the team has participated in include the renegotiating a debt for Usinminas, one of the largest producers of steel in the Americas, and helping Hermes Pardini, a medical laboratory company, raise R$210m through the issue of debentures.

pOrtO seGurO

Operating through a range of different subsidiaries, Porto Seguro provides diversified insurance products and services to individuals, legal entities, and governmental agencies in several different international markets, primarily in Brazil and Uruguay. Miriam Lunaro Battistin Trevisan is a key member of the company’s legal department as she has had a nearly 20 year association with Porto Seguro and therefore an unrivalled understanding of the internal business operations of the organisation. Supporting Battistin is contract legal analyst Ana Paula Terron Rocha who analyses contracts, appeals in bidding processes and provides counsel in general civil law. The team is distinguished for its strong ability to manage, negotiate, draft and analyse high volumes of contracts on behalf of the company to help it work towards its strategic business goals.

preVI

PREVI, which acts as a closed pension fund for employees of Banco do Brasil, seeks to guarantee its members financial bonuses above and beyond what their official pensions can provide. The company was founded in 1904, and is one of the largest pension funds in Latin America, boasting a diversified investment portfolio. Given the varied nature of PREVI’s investments, legal support of this operation is intensely complex and requires a team which is versatile in its knowledge of the company’s investments and having complete familiarity with PREVI’s internal processes. The demanding organisational objectives of PREVI are supported successfully time and time again by the legal team. In a team well-endowed with legal expertise, Marcelo Coelho de Souza comes in for particular praise, due to his coordination of a six-person function that deals with corporate, capital markets and real estate legal work.

VInCI pArtners

Vinci Partners is a Brazilian private equity and asset management firm and employs a legal department dedicated to supporting its business by getting transactions over the line in a legally compliant way with ultimate business efficiency. Staffed with consummate legal professionals, lawyer Eduardo Ribeiro was especially highlighted during the research for being a ‘very talented young lawyer with large experience in private equity and corporate transactions. He has led or been involved in several relevant mergers, acquisitions and divestitures transactions especially involving real estate properties’. Eduardo has skills that are regarded as key for a general counsel such as being reactive in identifying proactive solutions to eliminate or mitigate risks and advance the business, as well as being very good in managing external resources and working with teams. Ribeiro and the other legal staff at Vinci Partners undertook a highly prominent role in a recent transaction to secure Vinci Partners management of a sustainable energy fund in Brazil worth $162.9m USD and coming with a 15-year term.

zurICH InsurAnCe COmpAny

Global insurance giant Zurich has had a presence in Latin America since 1964 when it first invested in Argentina, and subsequently followed by entering into the Brazilian market in 1986 and then expanding into Chile, Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990’s. Today, owing in part to a joint venture with banking group Santander in 2011, Zurich occupies a position as one of the top five insurers in the market and as such, is serviced by a legal team based in Brazil. Providing Latin American focused legal support to the Zurich Company, the highly capable legal, regulatory and compliance professionals that make up the team are known for their flexibility covering the complex and often volatile insurance market. Valéria Schmitke leads the team in her role of Latam regional general counsel and is responsible for all legal matters, spanning corporate law, consumer directives, litigation, labour law and insurance matters. The team is also a foundation upon which Zurich can roll out its various products in a compliant manner, as it is responsible for all compliance programs including AML, FCPA, OFAC and complaints handling.

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BunGe BrAsIl

The global agribusiness and food company Bunge has been operating in Brazil since 1905 and is currently the country’s largest exporter of agricultural products. At the helm of this historic company’s legal department for almost 10 years is legal and compliance director Fernando Zanetti. He is supported by a set of experienced legal managers responsible for different areas as well a number of other talented legal counsel. Notable legal managers include Alessandra Rosa Soares who handles tax litigation, Judite Makabe who deals with compliance and Danilo Moreno dos Santos who is responsible for M&A transactions, corporate, contracts and antitrust matters. The team has been instrumental in overseeing company operations such as its vast distribution network – in 2016 Bunge Brasil exported a record volume of hydrated ethanol to India, the largest ever ethanol export by the company. With a possible sale of the company being mooted, Bunge in Brazil will be able to rely on the renowned expertise of its in-house lawyers to seamlessly facilitate any potential transaction.

FOOD, BEVERAGE AND TOBACCO

jBs

São Paulo headquartered JBS is the largest meat processing company in the world by sales, producing factory processed beef, chicken and pork, and also selling by-products from the processing of these meats. The legal team at JBS is a massive contributor to the success of the company, and having complete oversight of all aspects of the department is Khalil Kaddissi, who has occupied the legal director role since joining the company in 2014. In doing so Kaddissi gained responsibility for contracts, general corporate issues, capital markets, shareholder structure and tax litigation. His colleague Fernando Goncalves as legal officer covers all aspects of real estate law for the company.


mArFrIG GrOup

Multinational food company Marfrig Group have several operations in the food service sector and a presence in 16 countries across the globe including the large markets of Brazil, Argentina, France, the United States, the United Kingdom and China. From company headquarters in São Paulo, the legal team at Marfrig Group oversee all legal aspects of the company’s portfolio of businesses that encompass approximately 32,000 employees. Heraldo Geres is the vice president of legal and occupies the role of the most senior lawyer in the Group, and as a previous inclusion in The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist: Brazil in 2016 evinces the quality of the nature of support offered within the team. External factors imposed on the team include the impact of a rising Brazilian real on the company’s international sales which has weighed on the company’s financial bottom line, however new forays in to developing markets – most notably the Asia-Pacific region - can offer respite to this challenge and the legal team is expected to be heavily involved during all stages of these new projects.

mInerVA FOODs

One of Brazil’s largest food exporters and a leading producer of beef, leather, live cattle exports and cattle by-products in South America, Minerva Foods has a footprint in several states including São Paulo, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Rondônia, Santa Catarina, Espírito Santo, Pará and in the Federal District, as well as in Paraguay and Uruguay, operating ten slaughter and deboning plants and eight distribution centres. Providing support to these centres as well as the Minerva Foods commercial offices in Russia, Lebanon, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Chile, Colombia and the United States is the Minerva Foods legal team, led by legal director Flávia Regina Ribeiro da Silva Villa. Assisting in the company’s remit of selling its products to approximately 100 countries as well as processing beef, pork and poultry products, the legal team was spoken of highly by a nominating source who claims: ‘They deal not only with legal work for Minerva’s business in Brazil, which is huge, but also with Minerva’s business in very different Latin American jurisdictions such as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile [and] Paraguay’.

FOOD, BEVERAGE AND TOBACCO


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HEALTHCARE

ACHé lABOrAtórIOs FArmACêutICOs

Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos is a Brazilian pharmaceutical manufacturer that currently employs 4,600 people and holds a diversified portfolio of more than 300 brands in over 800 product presentations of prescription medicines. Supporting the executive legal director Luciana Gualda, who has led the team since 2011, are legal managers Julio Cesar Moraes dos Santos and Milton Guido Manzato. Patent coordinator Elza Durham also plays a significant role owing to her specialism in intellectual property. The team provided assistance on Aché’s 2016 acquisition of Nortis Pharmaceuticals, a key development in terms of the Aché business’ industrial investments plan. The following year, it was also involved in securing important partnerships with Atos and Ferris to modernise its IT systems and explore nanotechnologies respectively.

BrAskem

Braskem is a petrochemical company with a 2016 revenue figure of R$54bn achieved through its industrial plants spanning Brazil, the United States and Germany. A São Paulo based company, Braskem is the largest petrochemical company in Latin America and also holds the position of being the top thermoplastic resins producer in the Americas, and compliment this status by being Brazil’s main producer of polyethylene, polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Individual legal managers take charge of individual disciplines at the company, which extend to litigation matters, M&A, project management, finance and corporate governance. Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Brazil inclusion Cristiane Rego, in her role of legal manager – corporate executive, and legal manager Valter Pedrosa, were both highlighted during the research process for their outstanding support. Braskem delivered record-high operating results in 2016 and recently announced a deal to supply its environmentally friendly “I’m greenTM” Polyethylene to Buhbli Organics in order for them to reduce the carbon footprint in their packaging, displaying Braskem’s ability to help brands and retailers to meet their sustainability drivers. The development and availability of these products are thanks in no small part to the company’s legal team, and its commercially focused and legally accurate counsel.


essIlOr

Multinational French company Essilor produces optical lenses and equipment and is the world leader for prescription lenses. Part of the Brazilian arm of the global company’s operation includes manufacturing instruments and apparatus that measure an optical property. Leading the legal department which is currently comprised of eight lawyers and two paralegals is Ana Silvia Dias Haynes, general counsel and compliance officer for Latin America. Commenting on the achievements of the legal team Haynes says, ‘with a small team we were able to achieve more than 22 M&A’s and consolidation of deals in the region with high quality legal service provided’. The deals Haynes mentions include the acquisition of partner laboratories in Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Brazil. With around five M&A deals completed each year by the team across Latin America and the Caribbean, the legal team at Essilor in Brazil is recognised for their prolific transactional work in recent years that has contributed to the growth of the company. To manage this heavy workload the team created a system of regulatory and corporate analysis and clearance for M&A and operational legal matters for each country in Latin America that Essilor operates in, by using data alongside past experiences of conducting M&A in the region. Describing the team ethos Haynes says, ‘we are business partners that consistently deliver great performance by providing innovative and compliant legal solutions to Essilor and the people we serve to fulfil its mission of improving lives by improving eyesight’.

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GrupO DAsA

Grupo DASA is a Brazil-based medical diagnostics company offering the most advanced genetic and molecular biology tests using high performance equipment capable of extracting, amplifying and detecting DNA. With 50 years of experience in ancillary diagnostic services, the company has a very large medical staff in the country, consisting of more than 2,000 doctors renowned in Brazil and abroad and more than 18,000 professionals trained to provide the best customer care. Amongst these outstanding professionals, general counsel, legal and compliance director Fabio Cunha stands out for leading a team that oversees legal support in the region. Most recently, the legal team has been tasked with completion of one of the largest clinical laboratories in the south of the country in Santa Luiza, officialising the sale of 50.01% of its capital to Grupo DASA. Operating with 550 healthcare units in the country and encompassing 24 brands, Grupo DASA recently acquired Laboratório Medico Vital to further boost its portfolio of laboratories. The legal function was present during all aspects of this transaction, assessing whether the purchase was compliant with the appropriate regulation and local laws, and once approved submitted the transaction to the agreement of its shareholders.

GrupO Fleury

Founded in 1926, Grupo Fleury is one of the most respected medical and health organisations in Brazil. Its business lines cover attention units, operations in hospitals, reference laboratories, preventative medicines and dental diagnostics. Heading the legal team of 12 lawyers and five support staff for the Group is general counsel Andrea Marcon Bocabello. Explaining the scope and scale of the legal function’s recent work, Bocabello says, ‘we deal with several P&D projects, M&A’s and partnerships within the sector’. Another key feature of the department’s work has been forming a legal and business strategy to mitigate duplicated tax burdens on healthcare services, accommodate a class action involving the physician services and government regulation to permit digital innovatory services in healthcare in Brazil. One innovation the team has been commended for is the creation of a “lab of innovation” that consists of a day-long bimonthly group meeting to identify and map opportunities of development and creation of new services to internal clients. During a recent meeting Marcon says that ‘the team identified opportunities to facilitate authority approvals and delegation, a contracts review and approval system using a mobile phone app, implemented form agreements to be used and adjusted by procurement and real estate areas without legal support through the use of algorithms and a software to automatically produce litigation reports for the finance team and controllers’. Having established itself as a trustworthy, innovative and proactive team, it is no surprise that Grupo Fleury’s legal team enjoy a close working relationship with the company’s senior management and is closely aligned to the business.


jAnssen-CIlAG pHArmACeutICAl

Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical is a subsidiary of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, founded in the early 1990s after a merger between Janssen Pharmaceutical and Cilag. Led by legal director Felipe Alves, the Brazil based legal team at Janssen-Cilag is made up of three lawyers and one assistant with a direct report to Alves and a separate team comprising of five lawyers and one assistant as an indirect report. Alves recognises and stresses the prominence of each team member within a function that boasts a work force with a variety of talents: ‘I´d like to reinforce the importance of the indirect reports (lawyers) especially the litigation, contracts and tax team that are crucial to making our strategies and legal team work so well’. Some of the most important changes to the legal team in the last two years have included the change of mind-set within the team to become more business orientated, being closer to the business strategic areas, adding value in robust projects with ‘collaboration, accountability and sense of urgency’ and knowing more about the business strategy in order to provide better legal and business solutions. In being so closely integrated into the business the legal team’s mantra has been to act as “one team and one strategy”. Alves says: ‘Our purpose is to provide patients with the best products to treat their disease, giving them the opportunity to have long, healthier and happier lives. We are part of the same team. And to reach this result it is necessary to always challenge the status quo, looking for alternatives but always in an ethical and compliant way, being collaborative, accountable and focused on execution’. In order to strengthen this relationship the team has implemented a new structure model in order to guarantee the best support for the seven business units and the strategic affairs and access areas, working in multidisciplinary teams to guarantee the best legal approach. Additionally, the team utilises PMO Skills and tools, in order to guarantee the execution of the initiatives totally align with business requests. The most significant and large scale case the team has worked on in the recent past is a technology transfer agreement of a highly important medicine to the Brazilian government, during which Alves says the legal team was ‘an important player who helped to make the transaction feasible’.

HypermArCAs

Hypermarcas is a national champion in the pharmaceuticals market in Brazil, competing in all relevant segments of the industry and operating five industrial complexes with 14 different production lines, located in the states of Goias, Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. According to industry sources, Hypermarcas’ efficient and business oriented legal team operates in close proximity to executive management and stands out with its handling of litigation issues and its knowledge of the legal and regulatory environment in Brazil. Amongst a plethora of transactions completed in the last two years, the team impressed with its support of the 2016 sale of Hypermarcas’ condom division to Reckitt Benckiser for $175m. A year prior, the team played an important role in the sale of the company’s personal care and beauty division to Coty in a transaction amounting to $1bn. Exceptional lawyers that were singled out in this year’s research include Luciana Fraga Mello, Joao Paulo Costa and Viviane Gazza.

HEALTHCARE


HOspItAl sírIO lIBAnês

Founded by the large Syrian and Brazilian Lebanese communities of São Paulo in 1921, the Hospital Sírio Libanês is one of the most important hospitals in Brazil and South America. The legal team is led by Aline de Almada Messias, legal director and compliance who boasts a varied career with previous experience at the likes of Google, where she served as legal director for Latin America and also as legal director for tech giants Sony and Samsung. Also amongst its most notable members, legal manager Ana Lucia Vassallo stands out for her lengthy eleven year career with Hospital Sírio Libanês and her coordination of the legal and regulatory group of the National Association of Private Hospitals (ANAHP). Together the legal team share a wide range of knowledge in contracts, office management, and internal legal and corporate management. Praised for its extremely ethical approach to business, Hospital Sírio Libanês believes in a core value of “calore humano” which translates as “human warmth”, the legal team is a reflection of this sentiment, placing a high importance on ethics and a human approach to all legal operations.

sAlOmãOzOppI DIAGnóstICOs

SalomãoZoppi Diagnósticos contributes to the health of Brazilians by running laboratories that utilise some of the most modern scientific and technological concepts. Ana Luiza Duarte de Barros Dourado joined the company in 2015 and currently serves as general counsel and compliance officer. In addition to developing and maintaining the company’s compliance programme, she set up and implemented its legal department by hiring labour lawyer Jéssica Rodriguez Ramos in 2016 and recruiting contracts and compliance lawyer Tâmara Macedo the following year. The SalomãoZoppi Diagnósticos legal department is recognised for being involved in a range of activities including M&A work and conducting due diligence, handling tender bidding processes and litigation management for all applicable labour, civil and tax matters.

sAnOFI

Global French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is dedicated to science that is committed to finding solutions to current health challenges, including epidemics and diseases related to population aging and increased longevity. With over 100,000 employees and a business present in more than 100 countries, Sanofi is a leader in emerging countries and Latin America. The legal team in Brazil is led by general counsel Cinthia Ambrogi who is responsible for the legal operations of Sanofi group in the country and is a member of the management committee and reports to Sanofi’s general manager in Brazil. In this capacity the team supports all the human health business divisions involving pharmaceuticals, vaccines, generics, consumer health care and rare diseases. Sanofi had been part of a big push by drug companies, governments and private researchers to find new vaccines and medicines for the Zika virus after the mosquito-borne virus spread rapidly in Brazil in 2015 and 2016. Sanofi recently suspended development of the vaccine due to a decline in new infections and limits on US government funding. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) plans to modify its contract with the company so development would be paused but could be restarted if another epidemic emerges. The legal function has been tasked with securing fair-pricing agreements in exchange for licence and rights deals as well as assisting in the proposed patent deal related to the matter.

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sHIre

Shire is a major international biopharmaceutical company with a presence across much of the world. This, and the highly regulated nature of the market sector the company operates in, means that highly competent in-house counsel are a necessity for the business. Mauricio Pinheiro is head of the nine-person, Brazil-headquartered Latin American legal team, which has responsibility for all countries in Latin America including the major markets of Argentina and Mexico. Pinheiro goes into the highly varied workload that the team deals with in supporting the diverse business goals inherent in this broad brief. ‘In Brazil and Colombia we have cases open against government entities’, he explains, ‘while in Mexico we have a very complex process for incorporating a new drug [that is] ongoing. Throughout all this, legal has been playing an important role in supporting business, dealing with new regulations for incorporating new drugs and coordinating with business teams on price. This provides a lot of welcome challenge for us’. Carolina Martins, the Brazil legal department’s head, is another example of the individual talent present within the team. She had a significant role in ‘the legal entity integration of Shire and Baxalta, as well as a partnership with the Brazilian government involving the tech transfer of an important Shire product’, according to Pinheiro. He sums up the team’s overall objectives as such: ‘Finding the right balance of what we can achieve with the company, while making sure the company is not exposed to risk is the main goal that we have every day’. The successful completion of these objectives means the Shire legal team in Latin America stands apart from most other legal teams in its industry.

HEALTHCARE


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BrmAlls

BRMALLS is the largest shopping mall company in Latin America, with a portfolio of 44 shopping malls across the continent, a total sales figure of R$21.8bn whilst also offering marketing services to its shopping centres. The legal team is made up of highly skilled commercial lawyers acting on various matters related to the company’s assets, and have a determination towards facilitating the growth and expansion of the company in the region due to its specialisation with regards to the management and commercialisation of spaces in the shopping centre, which currently totals 1,620,600 m² of total gross leasable area. BRMALLS have approximately 9,000 stores that attract around 370.2 million people per year and it is to this end that the team is tasked with a number of large-scale real estate development matters, overseeing the acquisition of land and sale of mortgages. The BRMALLS legal team has a focus on the finance directorate, is responsible for the support to the areas of M&A, controlling and financial law.

COsAn

One of Brazil’s largest companies, Cosan started off in the sugar and ethanol industry and has since diversified its operational portfolio. Today it focuses on investments on industries such as agribusiness, fuel and natural gas distribution, lubricants and logistics amongst others, and with over eight decades of operation behind it, Cosan’s business portfolio includes industry leading brands such as Raízen Combustíveis, Raízen Energia, Comgás, Moove and Rumo. It is here where the legal function has strengthened relationships with stakeholders and business partners and enabled it to safely pursue its strategic goals. Cosan has a strong focus on innovation, competitiveness, efficiency and respect for the environment, investing in sectors of critical importance to the development of the country. Its energy and logistics team for example is managed by a seasoned legal team, helping Brazil to lay the foundation for lasting and sustainable growth. Part of the team is made up of a tax litigation department which oversees internal conduction of legal proceedings and the elaboration of procedural documents acting in cases to recover credits arising from subsidiary convictions in labour lawsuits.

INDUSTRIALS AND REAL ESTATE


ABB

‘We are a collaborative and client focused team that is always looking to efficiently serve the company by being fast and creative, but above all, trying to keep the company safe. The role of the department is to be business-focused, using law as tool to enable sales and, at the very same time, to be a guardian of the company’s assets - reputation being one of the most valuable ones’, says Luís Fernando Radulov Queiroz, vice president, head counsel and integrity officer, South America for ABB. Specialist industrials company ABB has 10 lawyers and six non-lawyers in its Brazilian legal team, and amongst other impressive results managed to be ‘central’ in various important business affairs, leading negotiations and pushing for creative solutions to solve issues. Evincing the trust the company places in the legal team, in 2016, an ABB Brazil legal manager spent a month in China, negotiating an important contract to the local operation, successfully improving the terms of the contract and facilitating the execution of the project. For ABB in Brazil, a crucial business undertaking is the restructuring of some of its group companies, which Radulov says the legal team is ‘leading the negotiations on, including payment terms coming from multiple jurisdictions and important litigation involving more than $200m USD’. He also states that the team has ‘successfully led, in the last three years, the certification of ABB Brazil as one of the few companies in the country to considered by the Federal Government and Ethos Institute a “Pro-Ethics” company’. Commercially-minded to its core, the team is keen to share knowledge around the business, it introduced an “Integrity Week” for Brazil and South America where activities were organised targeting as many employees as possible to improve the awareness of the organisation towards integrity and ethical behaviour. Noted for their contributions within the team are contracts’ manager Juliana Zanon – named ‘a great talent’ and chief integrity officer Brazil and litigation manager Milena Sbrana, who has been responsible for ‘keeping integrity at the top of the company’s agenda’.



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emBrAer

As a global conglomerate with businesses in commercial, executive, agricultural and military aviation, Embraer relies heavily on its widely acclaimed legal team to support its activities in Brazil and around the world. In addition to supporting all transactions related to the national and international purchase and sale of aircrafts, the team also seamlessly manages intellectual property and regulatory issues. Led by executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer Fabiana Leschziner, Embraer’s legal department participates actively in developing Embraer’s corporate strategy, which consists of new aircraft programs, E2 aircraft, defence aircraft, the inception of programs through continual development, production and sales. Formerly director of legal and governmental affairs at DuPont, Leschziner has been described as an excellent communicator and is well-placed to lead the function through tackling complex legal and compliance challenges. Other names singled out by nominators for their outstanding legal expertise in the aviation sector include Marcos Teixeira, Milena Stroppa and Ana Beatriz Tiago Alves.

CummIns

A global operation with 7,400 dealer locations globally, Cummins creates, distributes and supports an impressive array of diesel and alternative engines for civilian and defence clients at land and sea. A company with over 50,000 employees and a large presence in Brazil, the legal team based in the country is responsible for the whole of the Latin America region for the business. Patricia Ulian, formerly legal manager for agricultural company Syngenta, has been employed by the company since the end of 2010 and is the current legal director for Cummins Latin America. This is a particularly demanding brief given the variety of economic, political and cultural differences that span each jurisdiction on the continent, and the fact that Ulian and the rest of the Cummins legal team in Brazil is able to deal with this speaks volumes as to its flexibility. Ulian explains the context of the team’s operation within the company as being ‘involved in all corporate transactions, not only to give technical support, but to participate with a strategic perspective, anticipating risks and results’. Alongside Ulian, the legal team containing nine lawyers and six non-lawyers in total work in a way that she states involves ‘cooperation and caring about each other [as] teamwork brings more personal satisfaction, motivation and better results’. These results include the establishment of a ‘strong global compliance function’, and the development of tools which ‘drastically enhanced’ employee compliance awareness. Ulian explains how training sessions ‘simulating real day-by-day situations, especially approaching legislation grey areas’ were utilised, as was the development of KPI’s to spread an understanding of its efficiency. The current scope of the legal team is in contrast to the simple back office function it provided approximately seven years ago. Since then, Ulian states: ‘Year-by-year the team built a strong partnership with business leaders and legal became a key area in the company, supporting the main strategic decisions. In the last two years, the transformation was even deeper, the legal function that used to be an “advisor” achieved the status of “influencer”, which means that the whole team became a trendsetter of the company, helping leaders to draw new strategies and actively participating in the company’s decision making process.’


HArsCO COrpOrAtIOn

The US-headquartered, global industrial company Harsco Corporation recently found itself faced with a challenging situation, whereby one of its important operations in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais was shut down for two months due to the absence of an environmental permit. ‘The legal team took leadership in the interaction with environmental authorities and after a tough negotiation process that involved many legal, technical and political discussions, we manage to sign a term of adjustment of conduct (TAC) that allowed operations to resume while a corrective environmental permit process was ongoing’, says senior regional counsel and compliance professional Eurídice Mason. ‘After that, legal team gave great support to environmental operations, partnering closely with them in managing the corrective permit process but, most importantly, shifting the local environmental authority perception about Harsco from negative to positive. The corrective environmental permit was finally issued in May 2017, but the legal team’s leadership in securing the TAC enabled Harsco to abbreviate the shut down time of the operations from 10 months to only two months’. At present, the team is involved in implementing the innovative ‘Program of Conflict Prevention and Resolution’, an internal process to resolve employment relationship conflicts of all types prior to them becoming legal claims. According to Mason, ‘this program is not limited to the legal area but has a holistic approach, viewing the company as an organism, and involves all areas. The system sets forth clear rules on how to treat the conflicts, clear communication channels and tools, definition of roles and authority of each participant, circumstances when a matter should be escalated to superior instances and to whom. It also includes training for all facilitators and the employees on a general basis, so that everyone knows how to use it’. Besides Mason, a highly experienced leader, the team also features outstanding professionals Renata Valente and Renata Rezende, who have contributed immensely to the team’s success and reputation.

ItAúsA

Itaúsa is one of the largest private conglomerates in Brazil, and controls several companies active in the country’s financial, real estate, healthcare, chemicals and electronics industries. In the capacity of legal, risk and compliance director, Maria Fernanda Caramuru heads the legal team from the company headquarters in São Paulo. Fernanda has been in the role since 2016 and recently recruited legal counsel Edgard Pascarelli Assumpção to support her in handling each of the three aforementioned functions. A commercially-minded team that enables the company to achieve its strategic goals, the legal department was involved in all stages of Itaúsa’s July 2017 acquisition of shares in Alpargatas, a leading company in Latin America’s footwear sector from private investment holding company J&F Investimentos, in a deal worth R$1.75bn.



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mOnsAntO

The legal team of multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto in Brazil is led by the well-known and highly respected Erica Barbagalo. She is approaching her second year as legal director for the entirety of Monsanto South America, which was preceded by a four-year stint as legal director solely for Brazil. Barbagalo is merely one example of excellence from a team very well endowed with legal talent. Stella Pereira Lima, senior legal manager and lead in the commercial law team stands out for the significant impact she has had on the company’s commercial endeavours by developing, coordinating and leading a team of eight lawyers; each of whom have had particular success in honing Monsanto’s respective legal and business strategies to a fine degree of alignment. Andrea Garcia, also a senior legal manager, similarly came in for praise due to her team management abilities and extensive business acumen. The multi-billion-dollar valued Monsanto company maintains a significant presence in Brazil, particularly in the area of soybean production, and the successful merger between it and Bayer will, subject to antitrust approval, create an even more powerful agriculture entity in Brazil and the region.

mrV enGenHArIA

MRV Engenharia is the second largest homebuilder and real estate company in Brazil. Founded in 1979, the company is owned by Brazilian billionaire Rubens Menin and is present in more than 140 cities and 20 states of Brazil. Led by legal manager Guilherme Silva Freitas, the legal team at the company is composed of 25 employees. The function oversees various operations and keeps abreast of inter-jurisdictional legislation and manages new business developments, making technical, financial, legal and political matters feasible. Dealing with every stage of real estate transactions, the team is present to offer counsel all the way through from the prospection of the area to the final registration, and has managed a total of over R$5.5bn in sales thus far. The team continue to manage deadlines relating to the approval of projects by government bodies and notaries and third parties supporting the area’s processes.

synGentA BrAsIl

Employing 1,800 professionals, the Brazilian local subsidiary of Swiss multinational agribusiness Syngenta operates in the country’s main agricultural regions through research centres and experimental stations. As part of the parent company’s complex and diversified production chain, Syngenta Brasil and its legal team in São Paulo work on a number of deals involving regional suppliers that range from leading chemical industry and global operations to agricultural companies, independent producers and farmers’ cooperatives. The team is comprised of dedicated in-house legal professionals who have been with the company for a number of years, including legal director Filipe Teixeira who is responsible for intellectual property, seeds and biotechnology legal matters in Latin America. Senior legal manager for litigation in Latin America, Antonio Alexandre Cruz Felippe is another key team member, as are legal managers for Syngenta Crop Protection Vera Cintra and Patricia Cristina Medeiros.


rOlls-rOyCe BrAzIl

Legal director Ivan Dilly leads the legal team at Rolls-Royce Brazil, which currently is comprised of a structure of three lawyers, plus one project executive and one analyst supporting the world famous engineering company’s operations in the country, including its power systems business (the world-renowned “MTU” range of reciprocating engines). At the centre of many complex and important transactions, Dilly chooses to highlight the team’s work on the recent sale of Rolls-Royce’s energy business to Siemens, and the ongoing restructuring of the company in the region, which has resulted in a continuously increasing demand for legal support in all different areas of law. Taking a holistic approach, Dilly explains that the team is guided by ‘excellence and customer focus’ in line with the values of the Rolls-Royce business. A highly flexible team, the nature of support on behalf of Rolls-Royce Brazil is provided in a multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional fashion, Dilly states that ‘we have a global operation and even the decisions that are taken locally could affect our businesses globally’, which means that whatever the legal team in Brazil does could create worldwide impacts with regards to other geographical locales of the business, displaying the scope and influence it has. This collaboration within the Rolls-Royce business is especially important as the company undertakes such a broad range of affairs - civil aerospace, defence, marine, nuclear, power systems (through MTU, which manufactures large diesel engines and complete propulsion and drive systems for marine applications, for heavy land, rail and defense vehicles, and for the oil and gas industry), supply chain, finance amongst others all demonstrate the range of support is required. Dilly and team mitigate these challenges through ‘being able to provide and speak to the customer’s language, [acting] in a prompt way to do business in terms of this support’. Establishing and maintaining close relationships with business leaders in numerous jurisdictions is an important part of this process, and Dilly can point to ‘tangible impacts in all areas, as legal leads the relevant projects and is indeed central to them’. Speaking to the environment in which the team does business, Dilly explains that the various challenges presented to Rolls-Royce and other businesses operating in the country are providing windows of opportunity. He claims: ‘Political issues in Brazil along with new anti-corruption laws and regulation changes are such that we could talk about them for hours. These have all impacted our business but in my view it has been for good, the challenges we’ve faced in Brazil will ensure that our business is more compliant and successful in the long run’.



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tAesA

Transmissora Aliança de Energia Elétrica (TAESA) is one of the largest private electricity transmission groups in Brazil, exclusively dedicated to the construction, operation and maintenance of transmission lines. Chief legal officer Luciano de Araújo Ferraz manages the legal team of six lawyers, comprising of three lawyers for the litigation area, two for the projects area involving agreements, auctions and M&A, and one for the corporate governance area. In light of the regulatory and environmental matters in the region in the last two years the legal and regulatory teams changed the company’s position concerning the public organs and agencies, rendering it to a more active position. Amongst the team’s most notable innovations is the creation of TAJUR, a system for judicial and extrajudicial settlements based on several financial and legal parameters that reduces the number of company’s lawsuits, in addition to avoiding the entry of new lawsuits. Involved in the company’s large scale auctions, last year the legal team oversaw the successful powerline purchase at an Aneel auction – which boasts an annual revenue of R$175m, as well as the sale of Taesa’s shares held by FIP Coliseu. Commenting on the team’s ethos, legal coordinator for contracts and M&A, Henrique Perez Verçosa says, ‘our goal is to be a highly efficient and motivated team.’ The team has direct interaction with senior members of the company, including the CEO, board of officers and the executive board of the company, continuing to fortify the integration between business and legal departments.

VInCI AIrpOrts

A subsidiary of the French concessions and construction company Vinci, Vinci Airports develops, finances, builds and operates airports across the world. Its network comprises more than 35 airports in several countries. Headed by senior legal counsel Patrícia Garcia, the company’s highly acclaimed legal department provides assistance in respect to project finance, airport concessions and M&A projects. In 2017, thanks in part to the team’s effort on the legal and compliance aspects of the deal, Vinci Airports was awarded the concession for Deputado Luis Eduardo Magalhaes Airport for a 30-year term. With approximately 7.5 million passengers welcomed in 2016, the airport is the sixth largest in Brazil. The completion of such a significant deal for the company in in a short timeframe is indicative of the team’s outstanding transactional skills. The aforementioned department leader Patrícia Garcia was nominated for her outstanding support to the company, and she is known as being a professional a solid international background, having previously worked in Odebrecht’s Angola infrastructure projects.


VOlVO GrOup

Volvo Group has an extensive presence in Brazil, and produces cars, trucks, heavy machinery and marine engines in large numbers for the Brazilian market. Indeed, while car production is perhaps what the Group is best known for, that the other business areas are in similarly healthy shape is borne out by the fact that Volvo supplies equipment to the Brazilian army, state public services and a large number of construction companies as well as personal consumers. Legal support for such a variety of demanding clients requires the Volvo Group legal team in Brazil to be both highly motivated and technically skilled in a variety of business and legal areas; a number of the team’s members stand out for exactly these qualities. Alfredo Santana is legal and corporate compliance director for Latin America, and boasts twenty years’ experience as a corporate counsel in a variety of settings which provide him with an advanced skillset that makes him an ideal person to coordinate a top-level in-house legal department. Eliana Madini, senior legal counsel, backs up Santana while utilising an incredibly thorough understanding of Volvo’s activities in Brazil; she has been employed by the Group since 1994. With this competent and experienced legal team, Volvo Group’s operations in Brazil and across Latin America are in very safe hands from a legal standpoint.

WeG

Headquartered in Jaraguá do Sul with manufacturing and distribution units across the world, WEG is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of electric-electronic equipment with over 30,000 employees and 2016 net revenue of R$9.3 bn. Whilst the group’s general counsel is based in the United States, the Brazil based legal team is equipped with high functioning legal managers such as Paulo Ubiratan Mehret da Silva, Edenilson Schneider as well as Alexandra Oppermann who has been at the company since 2001, whilst Ana Carolina Bianchini Brandenburg handles tax and corporate legal matters. Recent achievements of the team include working on the company’s 2016 acquisition of a controlling stake in TGM, a Brazilian manufacturer of turbines and transmissions, and facilitating an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) agreements in 2017 to supply complete turnkey solutions for solar complexes in Northeast Brazil.



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ADOBe

Global software company Adobe has some of its most impressive global in-house legal operators based in Brazil. In particular, regional manager for the Latin America piracy conversion team Rodrigo Leme Freitas came in for particular praise by nominators. Freitas is responsible for the coordination of all of Adobe’s intellectual property actions in Latin America, a highly important area for a company that succeeds or fails on the back of protecting its product range. A nominating source had this praise for Freitas: ‘With large experience in anti-piracy matters and software licence agreements, Freitas combines the skills of a litigator with the abilities of a negotiator. He is one of the top experts regarding software protection in Brazil, and as vice chairman of the Business Software Alliance, he is deeply involved in the developing of strategies to reduce the software piracy in the region’. Alongside him, Adobe can also draw on the talent of legal counsel Ana Carolina D’Atri within its in-house ranks. Formerly a senior associate at a number of well-respected Brazilian private practice firms, D’Atri provides excellent additional legal firepower to help face all legal and compliance challenges facing Adobe in Brazil and across Latin America.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

AIrBnB

Airbnb recently identified Latin America as the fastest growing market for its business of connecting travellers to people who have a space to rent in their homes and want extra income. As a result of stepping up operations in the region, the US based company now has 123,000 listings in Brazil and almost 90,000 active hosts. In June 2017, the company hired Maytê Ximenes to head the domestic and regional legal functions as head of legal and senior legal counsel for Brazil and Latin America. Ximenes takes over from with Bruno Lewcki who was the first counsel employed by Airbnb in Latin Ameirca and is now the company’s director of public policy in the region. The company has recently recruited a number of legal interns to further bolster the legal department’s skillset. The legal function is recognised for handling matters relating to Airbnb’s intellectual property rights and the reform of Brazil’s Copyright Act.

CAst GrOup

Henrique Rabelo is the current general counsel for all companies that are part of the Cast Group, a Brazilian information technology company specialising in IT consulting, outsourcing and the integration of software platforms. A relatively young legal department, Rabelo states that the function was created approximately two years ago and involved the ‘whole work of creating culture and demonstrating value to the board’. Responsible for ensuring this culture and value is endemic, the team deals with several other issues on a day-to-day basis, Rabelo claiming ‘important measures [include] the legal participation with Cast service specialists exploring all the facts involved in litigation, which has increased success in several lawsuits, as well as the partnership with the CFO for actions to reduce tax liabilities’. With a cultural streak encompassing ‘austerity, responsibility and trust’, the team’s position is firmly ‘on the side of the board and shareholders…in order to better benefit the business, analysing all the risks and better possibilities for everyone to have security for decision making’. This comes amidst a background in Brazil of political crisis which has had a knock-on effect on Cast Group due to having several contracts with clients in the public sector, in addition to changes in tax law that have also conspired to have an impact on the company.




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GOOGle

Described as ‘one of the most talented in-house legal groups in Brazil’ by a nominating source, the Google Brazil legal team continues the company’s reputation of hiring the best and brightest talent in order to assist its ambitious business goals globally. In common with the culture of constant innovation throughout the company’s offices, Google Brazil recently announced a number of exciting new projects, the successful implementation of which were all fully supported by the legal team. For instance, the new software program Google Assistant was rolled out in Brazil in August 2017 and provides full Brazilian-Portuguese functionality for its users. Though the entire Google Brazil legal team was lauded during the research period, head of legal Daniel Arbix was singled out for particular praise; the immense talent he has displayed in supporting of Google’s operations stood him out as a highly competent and ambitious in-house counsel.

FACeBOOk

One of the world’s most valuable companies, Facebook bases its Latin American operations in Brazil through its São Paulo office, and due to its status as by far the most used social media website on the continent, requires legal and commercial support to mitigate any high profile risks encountered in the region. Providing legal and commercial support on a region-wide basis, the compact team of legal professionals for Facebook in Brazil contains experts in all relevant aspects of privacy, data protection, technology and internet law. Cited by a nominating source for her outstanding legal and commercial support even in the face of numerous challenges, associate general counsel for Latin America Mila Vio is described as being ‘very bright, [with] an outstanding résumé, with law, master and specialist degrees from Brazil’s top universities’, highlighting the quality within the Facebook legal team in Brazil. In addition to Vio, Marlio Martins, also an associate general counsel and Ricardo Dalmaso Marques, litigation counsel lead for Latin America, who specialises in dispute resolution and litigation affairs, offer Facebook a commanding legal presence in Brazil.

tWItter

Legal support to social media giant Twitter’s business in the Latin America region is based in São Paulo, and is assisted by associate legal director for Latin America Felipe França in addition to Regina Lima, also a legal director for the region. Operating from Twitter’s Latin American headquarters in Brazil, the team, assisted by an intern, is able to give the company a more localised support dealing with Latin America issues “on the ground” rather than simply base support from their US headquarters. Despite a relatively compact team, the value of the support provided in a localised context is extremely important, and Twitter’s Brazil based lawyers are known to partner closely with business colleagues not only in Brazil, but across the world with regards to the complex, changing and evolving aspects of internet and technology law.


mICrOsOFt BrAzIl

The Microsoft legal team in Brazil deals with a large number of concurrent issues at any one time, and its in-house ranks are correspondingly filled with highly competent individuals who are comfortable in a number of areas in addition to being specialists in many. The most senior lawyer in the team is Alessandra Del Debbio who leads seven lawyers, two interns and two assistants. Of particular note within the team includes Marcio Goncalves, who led an innovative law enforcement tool project for the team, which Del Debbio claims is the ‘single most impressive innovation that the legal team has created in the recent past’. The influence the team has had in significant transactions for Microsoft Brazil are vast, however mentioned by Del Debbio as being particularly important are with regards to ‘Rio Olympics 2016, a government security program, partnerships with the Brazilian government on education, another emblematic educational project involving a foundation in the free trade zone of Manaus and a memorandum of understanding between Oncoclinicas and our advanced technology labs’. Diana Cesaretti Silveira, legal director for commercial licencing, is an excellent example of this. Her brief includes both supporting the sales team with clients in the finance and manufacturing industries, but she also deals with regulators and industry associations in discussions on privacy, security, compliance, and transparency, among others. Similarly, vice president of legal and corporate affairs Alessandra Del Debbio and legal and corporate affairs attorney Régis Gasperi stand out for their success in supporting the software behemoth’s activities in Brazil. Del Debbio stood out in particular for her high level experience gleaned from a number of prior senior in-house legal roles, and Gasperi for his immense specialist knowledge in business legal affairs. Elias Abdala is also noted for ‘leading the most complex and socially impactful project on the assignment of Nokia Education Foundation’, further showing the team’s ethical standards. Microsoft’s Latin America manager speaks highly of the team providing feedback about the legal and corporate affairs team saying that it ‘is one of the very few legal teams I have worked with that I can say exactly what each one does, and that I can count to help us find solutions and sell more’.



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prOmOnlOGICAlIs

PromonLogicalis is a joint venture between Promon, the holding company of the group, which holds 35% of its capital, and the British company Logicalis Group Limited, which holds the remaining 65%. It is the biggest independent solutions integrator of information technology and communications in Latin America with operations in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Leading the regional legal team, general counsel Bianca Poffo de Oliveira Guedes has been praised for being a ‘hands-on and very skilled professional, with experience in different areas of the law and different markets’ according to nominators. Under her management the team has played an important role in the company’s expansion, serving the entire operational chain of telecommunications operators and the technological requirements of the corporate and government markets. The team supports the company in its integrated solution services, covering every step of a telecommunications project, from its conception to systems integration and supply of information technology equipment. As an integrator of high added value systems, PromonLogicalis strives to develop alliances with technology suppliers and other service companies that are recognised leaders in their fields of activity, such as Cisco, McAfee, VMware, IBM. Legal helps in the formation of such partnerships in the region, actively participating in the various phases of the companies’ development period within Brazil, whilst continuously improving relationships with shareholders and professionals affiliated to the group.

uBer

United States headquartered technology company Uber has invested in its Brazilian legal function as it caters for a surge in customer demand following its successful 2014 entry into the Latin American country’s market. In 2015 Uber hired Ana Pellegrini, an experienced in-house lawyer with a successful record of handling M&A transactions as the former legal director for Brazil and lead of UberPrid for Latin America. Since then Pellegrini has created a legal team by recruiting specialist counsel to cover and take responsibility for different areas for the legal function. Litigation counsel Caio Scheunemann Longhi and labour and employment counsel Maria Yumi Hatanaka were hired 2016 and the following year transactions counsel Mariana V. Boni Semeraro and labour and employment counsel Diogo Junqueira joined. A major piece of work the team work on is providing legal guidance relating to stringent new regulations approved by the Brazilian government that impacts on Uber driver obligations, permits from city authorities, licence plates and charging meters.


ArCelOrmIttAl BrAsIl

ArcelorMittal Brasil is comprised of 27 facilities with over 11,000 employees, and has a steel production capacity of 11.3 million tonnes in addition to an iron ore production capacity of 7.1 million tonnes. Supporting the world’s largest steel producer, the legal function in Brazil is made up of 19 lawyers and five non-lawyers in addition to ten interns. Taking pride in a robust sustainability programme in stakeholder engagement and environmental relationship-building, the legal team has an integrity culture to match. Over the years the legal department has been key in spreading the integrity ethos throughout the company and increasing awareness that such culture leads to a strong reputation and better results. The work of the team has included the creation of the integrity committee and the reputation and sustainability committee with direct involvement and the participation of the top management of the company. Head of legal and institutional relations and compliance officer Suzana Fagundes explains how the team has ‘helped to educate the leadership on the subject and to engage employees to act as ambassadors of the reputation and integrity of the company, to demonstrate that integrity culture could be a competitive differentiation of the company’. The high performing team has overseen several significant transactions, most recently the merger with Votorantim Siderurgia that is estimated to result in a long product steel producer with an annual crude steel capacity of 5.6 million tonnes and annual rolling capacity of 5.4 million tonnes, and the acquisition of 55.5% of Bekaert Sumaré from Bekaert group. These results have come during a time when the steel sector has faced challenging moments including an economic slowdown, a political and integrity crisis and legal uncertainty. ‘In the steel industry, we face the problem of overcapacity, imposition of aggressive trade defense mechanisms. This environment has challenged us to change the way we work to be able to do more with less resources’ Fagundes says. In order to stay abreast of this, the team has had to sharpen its focus and be creative without ever comprising its values. Fagundes speaks of these circumstances as being ‘an opportunity to reinforce our integrity [and] compliance culture inside and outside the company.’

MATERIALS AND MINING


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FOrmItex

The Brazilian conglomerate Formitex has a formidable legal team headed by esteemed corporate lawyer Amira Chammas. Just over a year-and-a-half into her role, Chammas has hit the ground running and has successfully implemented fundamental changes to the team. These include 10 transformative new policies and controls to ensure the department acts within corporate governance rules, a legal management system and an interface between the legal department and the operation areas. Now, the eight person function embraces a culture of team-work and cooperation. Lawyers with different levels of experience are, according to Chammas, ‘able to work together and openly exchange information and [are] capable of doing all the jobs even if we have vacations, maternity leave or any other absences’. Recently, the team introduced a system of online and remote access of relevant suits, processes and cases worked on by external counsel. ‘This change brought to the legal department more agility and saved lots of time on the part of the internal lawyers,’ Chammas explains.


GerDAu

A historic name in Brazilian business, Gerdau’s history dates back to 1901 starting out as a nail factory in Porto Alegre, and has since grown to become the largest producer of long steel in the Americas with mills in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, India, Mexico, Peru, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. Gerdau also has the distinction of being the largest supplier of steel to the automotive industry worldwide. The legal department is made up of a number of legal counsel who utilise their excellent contract negotiation skills to successfully maintain and expand Gerdau’s presence in domestic and international markets. Gerdau now has 337 industrial and commercial units and more than 45,000 employees across 13 countries. Recently appointing a new CEO, the company has experienced a major change in its senior management structure, and with the assistance of the legal team have worked to expand its operations in Brazil. In 2016, Gerdau generated almost half of its sales in North America, 32.5% in Brazil, 15.5% in Latin America and 4.5% in Europe/Asia, evincing the importance of the country in its business plans.

klABIn

With origins dating back to the 19th century, Índice Bovespa listed Klabin is the biggest paper producer, exporter and recycler in Brazil and generated a revenue figure of approximately $2.1bn in 2016. Providing legal support to all of the company’s activities, a team containing qualified lawyers, legal counsel and legal managers operate out of the São Paulo area and cover the legal aspects concerning Klabin’s industrial plants across many Brazilian regions, in addition to one located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fábio Medeiros was appointed in the legal director role of Klabin in mid-2017, after spending four years at CPFL Energia, bringing over 15 years of in-house experience and will help in leading the team in its mission to steer the company through all of its legal and regulatory hurdles. Also noted during the research process for their outstanding support to the historic and prestigious company were legal counsel Maria Izabel Araujo Reis and Luciana Leoncini Xavier.

suzAnO pApel e CelulOse

One of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, Suzano Papel e Celulose – more commonly known as Suzano - pulled in $3bn in revenue during 2016 on the back of its mammoth operations. The legal function of the company is headed by the highly experienced Pablo Gimenez Machado, who was employed as chief legal officer for North Latin America at Louis Dreyfus Commodities Brasil prior to taking on his current role of general counsel and head of institutional affairs at Suzano. He has an excellent pool of talent available to draw from in the company’s in-house legal team, including legal manager of three-and-a-half years’ standing Walner Júnior who provides top-level management abilities in support of the legal team’s goals. In response to a growing portfolio of responsibilities, the Suzano legal team has been taking on new talent recently, with a number of notable additions being made to the team in 2017 to assist with its supply chain, facilities and government affairs legal capacity.



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VIllAres metAls

From his base in Campinas, head of legal and compliance officer for Latin America region Artur Menegon da Cruz leads the legal team at Villares Metals, a group whose mission is to provide innovative solutions in steel, special alloys and services in a sustainable manner across a number of business segments including aerospace, automotive, medical and power generation. One of Brazil’s most important companies in terms of the export of the aforementioned steel products, Villares Metals employs a relatively compact legal team to deal with its legally compliant rollout of products. Da Cruz is responsible for all legal issues in Brazil and compliance matters in Latin America regarding the company’s subsidiaries, and he is ably assisted by lawyer Victor Mosna Tognon which means the company can draw on almost a decade of combined experience in the company. The main bulk of the team’s work falls under the legal practice areas of corporate and contract law, whilst the team is also expected to manage and monitor all legal aspects regarding opening of branches to enable the company reach its strategic goals.

tetrA pAk AmerICAs

2017 marks 60 years since Tetra Pak first began operations in Brazil and today, Tetra Pak Brazil is the second largest operation of the Tetra Pak Group in terms of sales and billing volume. The specialist food packaging multinational’s regional legal team is headed by general counsel Americas Eduardo Paranhos who, as executive director – legal affairs cluster leader, oversees all matters across North, Central and South America from the company’s São Paulo offices. Paranhos’ skills in intellectual property rights and corporate law are complimented by senior legal counsels Andre Fernandes Santos and Bruno Brocchi both of whom can communicate in four languages and are highly regarded amongst peers for their contract and dispute resolution skills. A key feature of the team’s work is handling transactions and commercial agreements with major food and beverage companies operating in the region.


yArA InternAtIOnAl

The Brazil legal director for chemicals company Yara International is Gianfranco Cinelli, and from his base in São Paulo oversees a legal team of 16 lawyers and six non-lawyers at the industrials and environmental solutions multinational and describes the overarching mission of the team as being ‘a complete and up to date business partner that fits all business and decision-making needs, challenging ourselves permanently in search of continuous improvement’. Citing four major M&A transactions in recent years, the team is commended for its support at all stages including during ‘external firm hiring, negotiation of the transactional documents and multijurisdictional antitrust clearance’, as well as the challenges of ‘proper post-merger integration - cultural and functional’. The aforementioned transactions include Yara’s acquisition of the fertiliser business of Bunge in Brazil and Paraguay, the acquisition of OFD Holding, which expanded Yara’s fertiliser production facilities in Colombia and the purchase of other distribution companies across Latin America. Displaying its ability to enable the business to reach its investment goals, the team was present during the ‘complex’ infrastructure contracts to support existing fertiliser plants in southern Brazil, a greenfield phosphate rock mining project in Minas Gerais and a new liquid fertiliser plant in São Paulo. In addition to these impacts the team also led negotiations with ‘an important client undergoing financial distress’ and managed to secure ‘very good’ conditions that meant there was a ‘reduced financial impact to the company’. Cinelli is proud of his team’s efforts both individually and collectively, and chooses to shine a light on Andressa Gudde who ‘drives the labour practice, from preventive [measures] to litigation with a hands-on approach’, Rafael Martins – ‘providing great to help on the integration process of Galvani, while also bringing Galvani’s legal department several improvements’ - and Rafael Cesar, ‘recently integrated as Yara’s legal manager, he has been working on contract managing innovation such as electronic signature process and software improvements, while also reassessing existing sales models to propose new legal alternatives on sales representatives and distribution contracts’.



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COnFeDerAçãO BrAsIleIrA De FuteBOl (CBF)

Brazil’s success in football, the world’s most popular sport, is unparalleled. FIFA world champions on an unprecedented five occasions, Brazil’s men’s national football team is a global sporting brand that has had some of the sport’s most iconic stars wearing its famous yellow shirt that bears CBF’s logo. In administering the legal affairs of this prestigious institution, legal manager Regina Sampaio is supported by junior lawyer Rebecca Jardim de Barros. In addition to ensuring the organisation complies with regulations from football’s relevant governing bodies, the team worked on an agreement to extend its sponsorship deal with US car manufacture Chevrolet in 2016.

reCOrDtV

With 63 continuous years in transmission, RecordTV is Brazil’s oldest and second most popular television network. Recommended for the problem solving abilities and innovative thinking of its lawyers, the legal unit is at the heart of the network’s operations. Composed of distinct litigation and counselling teams, the department possesses strong expertise in regulatory affairs, intellectual property, online media, tax, labour, criminal law and contracts. The litigation team, in particular, has recently demonstrated excellent results, having experienced a significant reduction in liability in civil litigations and successfully coping with an increasing number of labour and employment litigations during a recent, dramatic surge in lawsuits. The team has also impressed with the swiftness of its work on major content acquisition agreements, as well as its work on multi-billion dollar legal procedures focusing on freedom of the press, civil liability, class actions and intellectual property among others. The team is led by legal director Edinomar Galter, a lawyer with over 20 years of experience. This year’s nomination process also saw a number of excellent lawyers mentioned by sources- Marco Aurélio Lima Cordeiro, Larissa Korff Muller and Flavia Lizardo.

reDe GlOBO

Launched in 1965, Rede Globo is the largest commercial television network in South America. Based at the company’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, the legal team supporting the company includes senior in-house counsel Priscila Becker who joined in January 2014 and senior lawyer Flávia Maria Machado Brandão Teixeira who joined Becker 12 months later. A key feature of the team’s work is its handling of various transactions and agreements that have enabled the company to continue developing and broadcasting some of the most prominent media content on Brazilian television, including news, soap operas and the national sport, football, all of which have contributed to Rede Globo’s position as one the key names in terms of prime time television broadcasting in the country.

SPORTS AND MEDIA


OI

Oi is the largest telecoms company in Latin America, and despite a troubling 2016 that saw it apply for bankruptcy protection from the state, managed to accrue $8.4bn in revenue from its over-16 million subscribers. The company has a number of highly respected individuals in its in-house legal team that contribute to the function as a whole being a well-drilled and highly knowledgeable unit. Tax director Thalles Paixão came in for particular praise from nominating sources ‘for his innovative approach to complex tax matters that can decrease the taxation burden to the company’. Paixão is one to watch in the Brazilian in-house legal community, having received a “rising star” award from the industry press in 2017, and looks set to achieve further impressive feats while with Oi. Amanda Leite is a corresponding specialist attorney for contracts. She has carved out a thoroughly successful career in this area during her five-and-a-half years with the company, and is concerned with drafting, analysing and modifying contracts for all areas of the company. As Oi looks to navigate significant business challenges over the next few years, it is fortunate to be able to count on an in-house legal team of this calibre. Both individually and collectively, the Oi in-house legal team achieves high attainment on a regular basis.

teleFónICA BrAsIl

Telefónica, the world’s largest telecommunications conglomerate, present in 20 countries and employing more than 120,000 people, sells its products and services in Brazil under the trade name Vivo. The company is among Brazil’s leading telecommunications operators and services over 90 million customers throughout the country. In the last few years, apart from helping the business develop its service portfolio and introduce new technological capabilities to the local market, Telefónica’s in-house legal team has been applauded by industry experts for supporting a number of fundamental transactions. Amongst the most impressive of these is undoubtedly the team’s contribution to Telefónica’s 2015 acquisition of GVT, a transaction which led to the company becoming the largest integrated telecommunications business in Brazil, both in terms of accesses and of revenue. The team’s strengths lie in regulatory affairs and contract negotiation areas, with one source pointing out the team’s speed and efficiency in negotiating Pay TV content contracts.

TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES

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tIm BrAsIl - tAx

TIM Brasil is the Brazilian subsidiary of Telecom Italia Mobile, an Italian telecommunications company. As the fastest growing mobile phone company in Brazil with currently more than 13,000 employees, the company is known throughout the country for delivering innovative and quality services in mobile, fixed and broadband internet. The tax team, which has an “end-to-end concept” involving legal, litigation, consultancy, planning and compliance in the tax field, acts as a core pillar of TIM Brasil’s operations. Gusatvo Alves as tax director leads approximately 140 outstanding professionals including around 30 lawyers that were all praised by nominators, and he explains how ‘any decision in the company is supported or based on our advice, not as a mandatory issue but as a partnership view. The CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO, all of them, count on us as partners’. Ronaldo de Moura Estevão, responsible for tax litigation and tax audit stands out for developing and implementing relevant tax planning, and is responsible for the policies and action that allows the company to obtain clearance certificates. One nominator adds: ‘Estevão plays an important role in the relationship with state authorities, which leads to successful negotiation of tax debts and credit recovery’. Another outstanding member of the team is Victor de Almeida P. Furtado de Mendonça, currently the senior manager of tax audits, with over 11 years of experience working in the tax area of telecommunication companies with a focus on planning and consulting, tax audits and tax litigation. ‘He is known for his negotiation and interface skills with government representatives and experience with multicultural and multidisciplinary teams’. Additionally, Roberta Rodrigues Font, head of indirect tax planning and consulting SOx and budget manager also stands out for her tax consultancy to huge projects and management of SOx controls regarding tax procedures. Kristal Heine Schneeweiss as manager of direct taxes and is responsible for consulting, planning and compliance and provision of technical tax support concerning any direct taxes impacts regarding the operations performed by TIM Group in Brazil and its foreign entities. Bruno Justo and Alexandre Pieroni, executive managers of consultancy and planning and tax operations matters respectively, are also highly recommended for their contributions to this outstanding function.


zenVIA

The legal team at the core of the mobile and messaging services company Zenvia has recently undergone several transformational changes. According to general counsel Pedro Flach, ‘over the last two years the team has been reorganised in both structure and activities. Lawyers have been trained to understand other areas of the business and decision making best practices’. As a result, the team is now said to possess strong knowledge of the workings of Zenvia’s business and be able to provide fast and assertive responses to the demands of its internal clients. ‘Legal has been working in a proactive manner to develop and maintain the cultural change of the company,’ Flach says. ‘As an example, legal has learned techniques that were used in other areas of the company, such as agile development of software, and started working in the same manner as its internal clients would work, in order to better understand their realities and necessities. After that, legal started training other areas of the business about these agile techniques for managing activities’. Recently, Zenvia’s legal department conducted an assessment that resulted in a significant reduction in risk that had previously cost the company nearly 10% of its gross operational income. ‘Legal conducted the risk assessment, the plans for mitigating risks and the negotiations necessary for extinguishing the total risks,’ Flach states. ‘The process was entirely driven by the internal team and the result was a 95% reduction of the total risks involved. In addition the leaders and senior management were trained to identify potential issues and immediately act to prevent them’. Besides its leader, the team includes three highly experienced legal professionals- Amarilis Sehbe, Juliano Mirapalheta and Bernardo Malta.

TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES



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CCr

With a highly diversified business model primarily based around road, rail and air transport and infrastructure, CCR’s international, multi-billion-dollar operation is one of the most complex that any in-house legal team in Brazil is a part of. The company operates a long-term, public-private business model in a number of subsidiary companies that operate concessions for toll roads and other revenue streams related to infrastructure, and also has holdings in logistics, engineering, traffic control and administrative services. Mirian Gomes, legal coordinator, leads a number of teams at CCR who deal with these myriad responsibilities, which often require innovative new contracts to be developed in response to the unique challenges that the company’s business model brings. Similarly, Roberto Penna Chaves, legal superintendent, brings with him a wealth of experience gained via almost seven years with CCR, prior to which he was a partner with Fialdini, Penna, Tilkian Advogados.

TRANSPORT AND INFRASTRUCTURE

GrupO lAtAm AIrlInes

Born from the merger between Chilean airline LAN and the Brazilian TAM Airlines in June 2012, Grupo Latam Airlines is currently one of the world’s largest airline groups in terms of network connections and the largest Brazilian airline by market share and fleet size. The group’s well organised and knowledgeable legal department in Brazil has been an integral element of the significant growth of the business in response to its ambitious plans for regional expansion. Most recently, the team was involved in the signing of a codeshare agreement with Qatar Airways which is expected to expand both airlines’ extensive list of destinations, and create new growth opportunities in several international markets. The legal unit also services the group’s day-to-day operational needs and supports the business on a number of issues across antitrust, competition law, regulatory law, contracts and antitrust areas. It maintains close cooperation with legal teams based in Latin America, USA and Spain and has received praise from nominators for its involvement in key litigations and consumer and labour law projects.


ABB 37Grupo Abril 6Accenture 5Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos 30Adobe 44Airbnb 44Ajinomoto do Brasil 7Almap BBDO 4ArcelorMittal Brasil 49Arcos Dourados Comércio de Alimentos (McDonald’s) 8B3 20Banco do Brasil 20Bank of America Merrill Lynch 20Grupo Boticário 8Bradesco 21Braskem 30Bravante 13BRMALLS 36Brookfield Brazil 21Bunge Brasil 28CCR 58CPFL Energia 13Cast Group 45Cielo 4Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF) 54Cosan 36Cummins 38Grupo DASA 32Electrolux 9Eletrobras 14Embraer 38Enel Group Brazil 14Essilor 31Facebook 46Grupo Fleury 32Formitex 50Fugro Brasil 15Gerdau 51Goldman Sachs 22Google 46Harsco Corporation 39Hasbro 9Hospital Sírio Libanês 34Hypermarcas 33Ipsos Brasil 4Itaú Unibanco 23Itaúsa 39JBS 28JLL 24J.P. Morgan 22Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical 33

Klabin 51Grupo Latam Airlines 58Light 15Lojas Renner 10MRV Engenharia 40Marfrig Group 29Marsh 25Microsoft Brazil 47Minerva Foods 29Monsanto 40Morgan Stanley 25Natura Cosméticos 10Norte Energia 16Oi 55Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA) 11Pentágono S.A. Distribuidora de Títulos e Valores Mobiliários 26PetroRio 17Porto Seguro 26PREVI 26PromonLogicalis 48RB 12Raizen 18RecordTV 54Rede Globo 54Rio Energy 16Rolls-Royce Brazil 41Sabesp 19SalomãoZoppi Diagnósticos 34Sanofi 34Shell Brazil - Global Litigation Latam and Carribean 19Shire 35Staples 11Suzano Papel e Celulose 51Syngenta Brasil 40TAESA 42TIM Brasil - Tax 56Telefónica Brasil 55Tetra Pak Americas 52Twitter 46Uber 48Valeo 11Villares Metals 52Vinci Airports 42Vinci Partners 27Volvo Group 43WEG 43Yara International 53Zenvia 57Zurich Insurance Company 27

INDEX


Other titles in the GC Powerlist series

GC Powerlist AfricaGC Powerlist Africa TeamsGC Powerlist ArgentinaGC Powerlist AsiaGC Powerlist Australia/New ZealandGC Powerlist Australia/New Zealand TeamsGC Powerlist BrazilGC Powerlist CanadaGC Powerlist Central AmericaGC Powerlist ChileGC Powerlist China and Hong KongGC Powerlist ColombiaGC Powerlist Colombia TeamsGC Powerlist FranceGC Powerlist France Teams GC Powerlist GermanyGC Powerlist IberiaGC Powerlist Iberia TeamsGC Powerlist IrelandGC Powerlist Ireland TeamsGC Powerlist ItalyGC Powerlist Italy TeamsGC Powerlist Latin AmericaGC Powerlist MexicoGC Powerlist Mexico TeamsGC Powerlist Middle East GC Powerlist Middle East TeamsGC Powerlist Nordics

GC Powerlist Nordics TeamsGC Powerlist Norway 2017GC Powerlist RussiaGC Powerlist Russia TeamsGC Powerlist Southeast AsiaGC Powerlist SwitzerlandGC Powerlist Switzerland TeamsGC Powerlist TurkeyGC Powerlist Turkey TeamsGC Powerlist United KingdomGC Powerlist United Kingdom Rising StarsGC Powerlist United Kingdom TeamsGC Powerlist United StatesGC Powerlist United States: Latin America SpecialistsGC Powerlist United States Rising StarsGC Powerlist United States Teams

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GC Powerlist Africa 2017GC Powerlist Central America TeamsGC Powerlist Central and Eastern EuropeGC Powerlist Germany 2017GC Powerlist Ireland 2017GC Powerlist India TeamsGC Powerlist Peru 2018GC Powerlist Turkey 2017GC Powerlist United States 2018

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GC POWERLIST – BRAZIL TEAMS - legal500.com · senior lawyer is Jose Moscati, in his role of managing director – associate general counsel, contracting, Latin America. Moscati