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

Recently, my team and I were involved in a strategic M&A operation, where we received a capital injection of R$460m, made by an important American investment fund, becoming one of our main shareholders. This new round of investments will allow the company to have more autonomy to accelerate the construction of its solar farms, continue investing in technology and be able to expand its services to other federal states, accelerating the fulfillment of the business plan, in line with the other shareholders. In structuring this relevant operation, our team provided full support at all stages of the project, from hiring financial and legal advisors, signing confidentiality agreements with potential interested investors, preparing and executing the memorandum of understanding for those selected for the following phases of the due diligence, to the negotiation of agreements, respective corporate acts for due approvals, and the execution of the definitive version of the investment agreement and effective entry of the new shareholder.

This type of operation demands a lot of time and energy from the people involved in the workgroup, but it is always a unique opportunity to acquire new knowledge, new people, face new challenges and run a very complete diagnosis of the company, identifying the processes and flows that have some kind of opportunity for improvement.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

The work proposal that I always try to implement in all legal departments that I have had the opportunity to lead is to become more of a business partner, being strategic, proactive, of high technical quality, agile and business enabler. That outdated view of legal departments that did not have an SLA for returning demands, that took a long time to respond to queries, that simply pointed out numerous risks without presenting alternatives to enable the execution of the business, just does not fit anymore in today’s modern in-house industry.

As legal counsel, we need to know our business in depth and understand the peculiarities of each internal area in order to increasingly participate in the strategy, supporting decision-making, aiming to mitigate the company’s exposure to risks as much as possible. The lawyer who does not have this mentality and work proposal will most likely have difficulties to consolidate and develop their career in the legal departments of large companies.