About

Prioritising a decentralised structure attached directly to business units, the TITAN Cement Company legal team’s focus is on business support above all else; as such, it is thoroughly embedded with the operations of the company and collectively understands its commercial machine from top to bottom. Group legal counsel Nikos Karamitsanis leads the department and takes charge of a 24-person team dealing with an extremely diverse range of jurisdictions covering Western and Southeastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the USA and Brazil; Greece, as the home region, has a specific team dedicated both to local cases and to handling and monitoring cases, as well as coordinating projects affecting the group as a whole. Izabella Tsirmpa, corporate counsel for corporate finance and capital markets transactions, spoke to just some of the innovations the team has been involved with in the past two years: ‘As well as using technology to leverage internal expertise alongside the group IT team, we have undertaken a re-identification of the department’s role within the group. As well as establishing greater process efficiency though clear procedures, the team has enhanced its compliance handling through identifying business and industry trends and consulting client expectations and has developed a comprehensive training and communication package for the company’. It has also spearheaded some truly impressive deals on behalf of the company. As well as acquiring the 50% stake in Companhia Industrial de Cimento Apodi, a Brazilian cement manufacturer operating in the state of Ceará in Northeast Brazil, and dealing with the post-acquisition matters, it has taken part in a number of multi-million euro guaranteed notes offerings and a €300m multicurrency revolving facility agreement TITAN Global Finance and a syndicate of international and Greek financial institutions. These and other successes have been driven by a highly effective internal team culture, which Tsirmpa characterised as being based around three primary roles: ‘Firstly, to be an integral member of the management team, to be a participant in decision-making processes and to be a manager of legal affairs within the entire organisation‘. Therefore, the team focuses on providing legal support to the Group while striving to protect the Group’s core corporate values’.