About

Legal director and head of finance legal Carlos Döring was part of the Alcatel Lucent law department and kept his place post their high-profile takeover by Nokia last year, with the team having overall responsibility for Nokia’s global finance legal function. He explains that the transition has provided a vast amount of work for the department: ‘We were in charge of the whole refinancing of the balance sheet, which paved the way for the corporate approach we ultimately took with Nokia’. The team is at the cutting edge of using financial legal work strategically, as Döring describes. ‘The team focuses on structuring complex infrastructure transactions, sometimes using finance as a limited, but strategic resource to help penetrate certain key customers and markets’, he explains, ‘and through this we have been successful in assisting the commercial and sale efforts of the group in new markets and accounts’. This method, of ‘using project financing as a tool to gain market share and increase the company’s revenue – while simultaneously supporting the company’s own corporate finance activity’, has allowed the team to contribute to the company’s results and be seen as a key business partner to its internal constituents. Döring has been fortunate in having a highly capable team to work with, and he points out Gisele Lemos and Anne Detter, both senior finance lawyers, as ‘part of a handful of people in the group who have been at the forefront of major financing deals’. Döring is clear about the team’s guiding principles. ‘We are tasked with getting the deal done’, he explains, ‘and so the team works on very complex project with the ultimate goal of facilitating the business objectives and corporate financing needs of the company. We take pride in being very hands-on yet pragmatic, essentially doing what it takes to get the deal done, in compliance always with corporate policies and values and without cutting corners, of course’.