About

Supporting an extremely significant agricultural company with total revenues of around €3bn as of 2015, Vivescia’s legal department has undergone somewhat of a transformation in recent years. For a start, group general counsel Xavier Donnenfeld has ‘recently added two senior lawyers over the last few months’, one of whom is an expert in M&A matters, as he is ‘looking to develop specialism within the team, particularly in M&A work’. The team is also looking to build and consolidate on recent increases to the capacity of its tax team, which has gone from zero to three members in a relatively short period of time. To successfully marshal and organise a team of 11 lawyers located in a number of locations, the team has introduced new technologies aimed at giving it an edge. Donnenfeld reports that the team is now ‘using a lot more technology, new communication tools that were not needed previously’. Similarly, the team has ‘developed an electronic documentation system and e-commerce systems that can be used in real time’, along with ‘a new tool for training people within the company’. The team’s appetite for innovation has had major knock on effects in the support of the company’s objectives, translating into major successes for it. ‘We have participated in restructuring the group over the last five years’, recalls Donnenfeld, ‘including having merged over 60 companies, with the tax integration that goes along with this… our efforts have enabled the final shareholders to have their dividends faster’. In terms of his guiding principles when organising the team, Donnenfeld has been ‘really focused on developing clear collaboration within the team and between team members, as the team is quite young and has to deal with a lot of pressure at all times’. On top of this, ‘in terms of the other offices we have to develop common intelligence between the group members’ so that all group legal members are working towards a common goal, he says.