About

An in-house counsel with over 25 years of experience in a diverse range of areas, Flavia Kaczelnik has served in a number of senior legal leadership roles. These include taking on the responsibility of setting up and managing companies, acting as the de facto company secretary and corporate governance, participating in various negotiations of a wide range of contracts. This particularly includes commercial contracts and joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions and divestments in a number of international transactions, regulatory activities, disputes and litigation. Since December 2016, she has served as the vice president, associate general counsel EMEA at BCD Travel, a business travel company. Prior to this role she served as the managing director of the Dutch subsidiaries of OSX, a Brazilian, then listed entity in the shipbuilding and integrated solutions business for the oil and gas offshore industry where her role involved the opening, management and corporate governance of the company’s office in the Netherlands and the representation of the company’s interest in Europe. Kaczelnik previously served as a senior in-house legal counsel with Shell in the Netherlands, advising the exploration and production division on new business developments and M&A activities worldwide. She also worked in Brazil as the head of E&P legal and member of both the E&P and legal coordination teams. During her time in this role she says: ‘I am proud of having made to the management team, of having been part of all relevant discussions regarding business strategy, of having been part of a team that successfully implemented Shell’s exploration and production activities in Brazil, of having hired, trained and formed a top class legal team’. She is also particularly proud of her contribution and participation in the setting up of the regulatory framework for the oil and gas industry in Brazil and ‘working together with other industry lawyers and regulatory authorities, bringing international best practice to Brazil; to have formed a solid network of tier one professionals in the industry’ adds Kaczelnik. Before joining Shell, she served as managing counsel for the asset management division of Brazilian private investment firm Banco BBM. Whilst there, she says that a standout accomplishment was to merge two investment funds regulated by the Brazilian SEC. ‘The merge was possible under the then existing regulations; however the challenge resided in the fact that it had never been done before and there were no procedures prescribed by the Brazilian SEC. I drafted and proposed to the Brazilian SEC such procedures, which were adopted in full and the first merge of investment funds in Brazil was successfully implemented’, says Kaczelnik. Amongst her most significant transactions is her first M&A transaction in 1999, a US$80m divestment of Shell’s downstream activities in the Midwest region of Brazil. She has acted in a number of oil and gas related acquisitions, farm-ins, divestments, farm-outs, and joint ventures. Most recently, Kaczelnik was involved in the acquisition of Grass Roots Meeting & Events by BCD Travel from Blackhawk Network Holdings, including the acquisition of operating companies in the UK, the US, Germany and Switzerland, for a purchase price of approximately US$30.3m.