About

MAXAM is a global technology company, specialising in the design, development, manufacture and application of energy materials. Founded by Alfred Nobel in 1872, MAXAM currently has in excess of 6,500 employees, more than 50 subsidiaries, 80 industrial units and commercial operations in over 100 countries. Carlos Gastañaduy is the general counsel at MAXAM, heading the legal department of eight lawyers and one paralegal. The legal team recently changed the way they’re structured, with some lawyers working for the business stream and the others for the head office. The business lawyers works very closely with business units and are transactional lawyers, mainly focused on contracting and corporate matters and working on a cross-businesses and multi-jurisdictional basis. Whereas lawyers working for the head office are mainly involved in intra-group transactions as well as in providing daily legal advice to corporate functional managers. The team also launched the company’s “North America Legal Desk”, to cover and advise the business divisions in the US and Canada. Blanca Manzano (legal head business units), Maren García-Valle (corporate functions legal partner) and Jim Beasley (Terra Solutions – Africa Legal Partner), are the key pillars of the legal department. ‘All of them have a good knowledge of our businesses and are used and well skilled to work on a global basis’, says Gastañaduy. The legal team was involved in a fully-comprehensive internal due diligence last year in connection with a large M&A transaction affecting the shareholding of the company. ‘On top of our daily work, we had to gather all materials, arrange an electronic data room and interact with different seller’s and buyers’ law firms, investment banks and other advisors for seven months, which was a really big challenge’, explains Gastañaduy. ‘It is also remarkable that we took part in a complicated IP arbitration in Australia that was really tough and time consuming, where we were able to reach a mutual satisfactory settlement just when the arbitration panel was about to issue its award’, he continues. According to Gastañaduy, the legal team’s culture can be summarised as ‘helping MAXAM do business’, which embodies its philosophy of being results-oriented and problem solving as in-house lawyers.