What are the most significant cases or transactions your legal team has been involved in recently?

Some of the most relevant cases we have had at the legal level has been the Judicial Reorganisation process of one of Massai Group’s companies. This reorganisation involved great challenges such as meetings with creditor banks, restructuring assets and workers of the company, to finally achieve an agreement between the largest creditors and achieve progress in the reorganisation process, which also implied another challenge that was to sell the company to be able to solve the debts that it maintained.

Without prejudice, we also had lawsuits for debts of that company, which were trials that lasted approximately four years. These trials dealt with matters of reorganisation process, on a law that was just in force, and that cost a lot that the courts could properly understand and apply it. We reached the highest court of our country, the Supreme Court, which accepted our thesis of the case and gave us the reason in the judgments we had on this point.

In addition, from the point of view of the main business of the company, which is the agricultural area, and which is no less important, the last most important transactions have been the inclusion of our grapes and cherries in international markets, in which we have had to make contracts with exporters and foreign clients, with important challenges in the drafting and review of contracts.

Why are in-house lawyers well positioned to drive change in their organisations?

I believe that today, unlike in the past, in-house lawyers are better positioned to drive major internal changes. This is mainly because the in-house lawyer today is more comprehensive in many matters, and not only focuses on a single area of law.

Today, in-house lawyers have more capabilities and commercial interests that go hand in hand with the hard area of law, and we have more relationship with other departments of the company that make our vision more global in accounting, human resources, finance and in general in the various businesses that the company carries out. Our vision, from that point of view, helps us to be able to promote internal changes, changes that always go with the modernisation that the company carries out, and the constant movement of the market that it makes with the internal legal areas must always be on alert.

This certainly brings with it a comparative advantage, in my view, with other lawyers, who are only experts in a single area of law.

What are some of the major legislative or regulatory changes that have affected you?

Important legislative changes that we have had and that have affected us positively, have been mainly labour legislative changes, such as the reduction of the working day from 45 to 40 hours, which has implied the internal modification of the labour structure, to be able to comply with said modification, while maintaining the productivity of the company.

Another important aspect, also in labour matters, has been the modification that has been made to the procedure in Collective Negotiations, which has implied greater fluidity in the negotiation with the unions in the arrival of agreement.