Event Report

On the 23rd of March, inside the grand Four Seasons Hotel Ritz in Lisbon, the in-house community of Portugal joined The Legal 500 for yet another content-packed summit. The summit was introduced by research analyst at The Legal 500 – Melissa Yebisi, to a full-house of in-house delegates, alongside Head of the GC Powerlist Series, Gurpartap Basra. Immediately after, the summit kicked off with an exciting panel session which looked at the critical evolution of the general counsel role, moderated by partner, Rui de Oliveira Neves from Morais Leitao, and co-panelists, António Neto Alves from The Navigator Company, Patrícia Afonso Fonseca of Novo Banco and Mariana Solá Albuquerque from Powerdot.

Immediately after a buzzing period of questions from attendees, our next sponsor VdA took the stage, led by Miguel Ventura of VdA and fellow panelists João Tomaz, from the Portuguese Banking association and Gonçalo Castilho dos Santos, from Banco de Portugal. This panel investigated the growing trends of the ESG agenda, a pertinent concern for modern in-house counsel. After a thorough discussion of hot-topic ESG, it was time for delegates to catch their breath on a coffee break which was spent mingling and enjoying decadent treats provided by the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz.

The next leg of sessions had three different panel discussions, with the first one discussing the recent M&A activity in Portugal as well as its related ESG issues, offered by José Maria Corrêa de Sampaio, partner at Abreu Advogados, Marco Lourenço, at Caixa – Banco de Investimento, João Paulo Brunet, board member at Banco BNI Europa and Margarida Anselmo from Haitong Bank. The intrigued audience then had the opportunity to hear about legal team structure and management when Raquel Azevedo, partner at PLMJ, Natália Rebelo of IKEA Portugal and INGKA Centres Portugal, as well as Catarina Gonçalves de Oliveira of Banco CTT took the stage.

The event was crowned by the final discussion presented by CMS, that investigated data protection concerns for organisations in Portugal. João Leitão Figueiredo, partner at CMS, Joana Pinto from Accenture, Pedro Correia from Lusíadas Saúde and Francisco Figueiredo, head of legal at Grupo Arié offered their varying experiences from their industries in this discussion. The summit was closed by Melissa Yebisi, of The Legal 500 and delegates were invited to meet and network in the foyer with drinks and light snacks.

The Legal 500 is extremely pleased with the turnout of this event, and the exciting discussions that were had on each sponsor’s panel. We look forward to hosting another great event in Lisbon in the near future!

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