About

Based in São Paulo, but with a continent-wide remit, Mauricio Joffily Pinheiro is Shire’s head counsel for the Latin America region, a position he has held since February 2015. Arriving at the global pharmaceutical company in the face of a difficult situation – Shire had passed through an unsuccessful acquisition process with Abbvie and much of the legal team left the company – required Pinheiro to ‘lead a full restructuring of the legal team and perform a legal risk assessment in many areas of the company’. Common legal work at Latin American business of Shire involves specific regional aspects; Pinheiro oversaw the implementation of new, standardised distribution agreements in the Latin America region, implementation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Anti-bribery and Anti-corruption (ABAC) regulations, and new contracting policies. With a huge amount of experience in-house in the pharmaceutical industry, Pinheiro previously worked at BioMarin for three years where he took charge of the start-up of the legal and compliance departments for Latin America, along with a seven year stint at AstraZeneca as legal director for Brazil. Pinheiro believes that the biggest challenges he has faced in his career were the price negotiations with the Ministries of Health in Brazil and Argentina, and dealing with a high turnover of people in a short amount of time. Despite the geopolitical situation in parts of the region being unstable – economic and political crises in Brazil and Venezuela being two examples – he states his motto is to ‘read the environment appropriately and identify partners to operate in these markets under a strong compliance framework’. Alongside external counsel and the local team, Pinheiro was instrumental in winning a favourable decision in a $60m litigation involving clinical trials in Brazil. According to Pinheiro this represented ‘a landmark for the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil and for the post-trial obligations’. Currently supporting Shire’s integration with Baxalta in Latin America, Pinheiro can continue to influence company success via his excellent work and his seat at the regional leadership team. Pinheiro also has a relationship with Shire’s regional head and local general managers in different countries, a relationship he describes as being a ‘pure business partnership’.