Head of legal and secretary to the board of Bergé y Cía – effectively head of all legal and tax services across the entire company and its subsidiaries – since 2013, Salvador Bautista Enciso has amassed an enviable volume of senior in-house legal experience since joining the company in 2006. The company is active in a number of sectors, including the maritime, automotive and financial sectors, providing Bautista with a demanding set of legal responsibilities to handle.

He sums up his development as a legal and business professional with the company as such: ‘The life of my company in the last eight years also marks the kind of in-house lawyer I think I am: possessing a multi-disciplinary, practical and commercial approach; accustomed to working in high pressure environments; focused on solving problems and facilitating agreements; and very close to the business strategy and decision-making’. He mentions a number of personal highlights while working with Bergé as those that stick out as the most enjoyable or important: ‘Firstly, the renegotiation of our financing scheme, started in 2015 and signed in 2016.

I am very proud of this deal, because I believe the outcome was very good for Bergé, but also because my involvement was not only purely legal but also to do with the design of the financing structure negotiation efforts. Secondly, the sale of our division Reyser in 2017, which we owned since 1960, to Dubai Ports: a sub-holding including 28 companies established in Spain, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago. This was an outstanding process, as we managed to do it in only four months. Finally, the acquisition, by means of an asset deal, of the import and distribution business of the Kia and Mitsubishi vehicles in Finland, closed in January 2018, which was our first experience in that country and in the Nordics region, and was financed with a very innovative structure’.

Bautista has also overseen impeccable results from the overall legal function, achieving outstanding results from performance surveys conducted by senior executives around the company.