Brazil Teams 2017
| Shire
Shire
Shire is a major international biopharmaceutical company with a presence across much of the world. This, and the highly regulated nature of the market sector the company operates in, means that highly competent in-house counsel are a necessity for the business. Mauricio Pinheiro is head of the nine-person, Brazil-headquartered Latin American legal team, which has responsibility for all countries in Latin America including the major markets of Argentina and Mexico. Pinheiro goes into the highly varied workload that the team deals with in supporting the diverse business goals inherent in this broad brief. ‘In Brazil and Colombia we have cases open against government entities’, he explains, ‘while in Mexico we have a very complex process for incorporating a new drug [that is] ongoing. Throughout all this, legal has been playing an important role in supporting business, dealing with new regulations for incorporating new drugs and coordinating with business teams on price. This provides a lot of welcome challenge for us’. Carolina Martins, the Brazil legal department’s head, is another example of the individual talent present within the team. She had a significant role in ‘the legal entity integration of Shire and Baxalta, as well as a partnership with the Brazilian government involving the tech transfer of an important Shire product’, according to Pinheiro. He sums up the team’s overall objectives as such: ‘Finding the right balance of what we can achieve with the company, while making sure the company is not exposed to risk is the main goal that we have every day’. The successful completion of these objectives means the Shire legal team in Latin America stands apart from most other legal teams in its industry.
