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

The past few years have been tough for all of us in the hospitality business. The pandemic hit everyone hard, but our sector was probably one of the first to be affected and will be one of the last to recover fully. It is also worth noting that the pandemic faced us with one of the most challenging tasks: devise legal strategies to allow the organisation to continue existing in a zero-income scenario that lasted for eight months. The need for a creative and adaptive mindset had never been more critical to that extent. These qualities, along with a highly motivated and committed team, allowed us to renegotiate the company debt amid the pandemic (in a scenario where all our operations were closed), rearranging the company debt profile, which was critical for us to navigate these times. This transaction involved 12 jurisdictions and was made for US189m. In addition, we were able to finalise the divestiture of some non-operational assets in several jurisdictions. Furthermore, we completely modified how some of our units conduct their business, from how contracts are executed with our customers to their labour structure. In addition, once we could start reopening our business, we had to keep up to speed with the different regulations issued in the countries where we operate, structuring legally sound and possible business scenarios to maintain a safe environment compliant with all labour regulations.

How have you harnessed technology to improve output or drive efficiencies?

The pandemic gave us a different approach to meetings and the possibility to have contact and control of projects and transactions using methods that were before very rarely used. These challenging scenarios pushed us to use business intelligence solutions to help us have better control and management of all legal operations. In addition, we are on a permanent lookout to implement and review new ways of doing business, raging from data analytics to contract legal design.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will an in-house lawyer need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

I believe it is critical to be creative and adaptive, to identify potential options and alternatives in all scenarios while applying technology to our day-to-day processes and redefining them to be more efficient in an ever-changing environment. The modern in-house needs to be a complete counsel, not only regarding legal risks but also becoming a business partner. To that extent, it is imperative to understand the business and its strategy to create value.