About

Gabriel Alves da Costa is Shell Brazil’s managing counsel for litigation in Latin America and Caribbean. In this position, he is a member of Shell Brasil’s legal coordination team and the Shell Group’s global litigation extended leadership team. He leads a team of nine professionals responsible for managing all disputes, from administrative proceedings to high-exposure domestic litigation to international arbitration in jurisdictions such as Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Trinidad and Uruguay. Recently, he chaired Shell Group’s Global Arbitration Advisory Committee. Prior to joining Shell Brasil in 2012, Da Costa worked in the litigation and arbitration teams of two of the largest Brazilian law firms in Porto Alegre and São Paulo and in the international arbitration team of a major US law firm in New York. He co-chairs ICC’s Energy and Infrastructure subcommittee for Brazil. He has published articles on dispute resolution-related topics and is a frequent speaker at high-profile events related to arbitration and the in-house legal profession in general. Among many litigation highlights, Da Costa led the negotiations of a US$200m settlement agreement in a public civil action related to the environmental contamination of an inactive chemical manufacturing plan. The negotiations were mediated by the chief justice of the Superior Labour Court and involved several stakeholders, unions and prosecutors. Da Costa describes it as, ‘a very intense and pressuring experience, which certainly sharpened my negotiation skills not only with external stakeholders, but also internally with the company, as a settlement of this magnitude demanded several different approvals and consent building’. Da Costa has implemented several changes to the litigation department in his tenure including a review of Shell Brasil’s panel firms, which is ongoing, and the consolidation of nationwide, multimillion-dollar cases to one external firm instead of using multiple firms, saving the company money and efficiency.