About

TAP Air Portugal has been in operation since 1945, and celebrated 74 years of operation on 14 March 2019. It completed its privatisation process with Atlantic Gateway in 2015 and is now present as a new private shareholder of its share capital. TAP hub in Lisbon is a key European gateway at the crossroads of Africa, North, Central and South America, where TAP stands out as the international leading carrier in operation to Brazil. The legal team supports a network comprising of 92 destinations in 36 countries worldwide and is one of the biggest employers in the country, with over 11,000 employees. The Portuguese legal team is made up of 14 lawyers and four legal assistants, and provides legal services to all the companies that belong to the TAP group, supporting the holding company TAP SGPS, the operating companies TAP Air Portugal and Portugália, and the companies providing ancillary services to the group; UCS, Megasis and Cateringpor, and their holding company TAPGER. Highly praised general counsel Stéphanie Sá Silva leads the legal team and has been noticed by a nominator for being ‘an outstanding lawyer with an in-depth knowledge of several areas of law’, who aside from her day-to-day work, assists the executive committee and regulatory transactional work. Some of the legal team’s highlights include the package of financing agreements in total amount of circa €250m which was closed with financial entities such as Macquarie, Banco do Brasil, Citigroup and JP Morgan since mid-2018. It has been instrumental to establishing the fleet renewal involving 37 new aircrafts and operation of 10 new routes until the end of 2019. ‘We act together as a dedicated and dynamic team; our mission is to provide highly qualified and business-oriented legal advice to the management and the operational areas of TAP; helping to achieve the company’s strategy and providing first-class service levels is our motto’, says Sá Silva.