Team size: 15
Major legal advisers: Linklaters, Vieira de Almeida, and SRS

What are the most significant cases or transactions you and your team have been involved in?

Luz Saúde group is one of the largest health care groups operating in the Portuguese market. Under the trademark Hospital da Luz, the group supported considerable organisational changes over the last years. In February 2014, the group holding company (former Espírito Santo Saúde, SGPS, SA) successfully concluded with an Initial Public Offering; and its shares were admitted to negotiation in Euronext Lisbon. Later in 2014, the group was subject to a takeover bid, a complex and newsworthy process, involving four different offers, one of the most competitive bidding processes ever seen in the Portuguese market. Most of the group shares have been purchased by the insurance company Fidelidade, owned by the Chinese group Fosun. As a result of this acquisition, the group changed their name to Luz Saúde. Luz Saúde legal team has established effective system of the referred deals while contributing to the success of the process of the integration into Fosun Group, advising the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. In 2018, Luz Saúde requested for the loss of public company status to the market regulatory body (CMVM) and it was authorised.

Luz Saúde group is running a total of 30 hospitals, clinics, and senior residences, across more than 20 different companies; and the legal team is highly involved in the acquisition and expansion processes well as the company’s other business activities. In 2021, the legal team was highly involved in the acquisition of facilities in Guimarães (north of Portugal), Funchal (Madeira Island), Coimbra (centre of Portugal) and Torres de Lisboa (Lisbon area). The team was also involved in the expansion of Hospital da Luz Lisboa and in greenfield projects regarding the facilities in Vila Real (north of Portugal), Covilhã (center of Portugal) and Odivelas (Lisbon area).

Even in the best-case scenario, Covid is likely to have far-reaching ramifications. How are you safeguarding the long-term health of the business?

Covid-19 was, and still is, a huge challenge for Luz Saúde hospitals and clinics. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we had to transform our hospital and clinics circuits in order to guarantee the safety of workers and clients. Since Portugal was highly affected by the third wave of the Covid pandemic in Europe, Luz Saúde units were called to help SNS (the public service) to treat Covid patients. We are now coming back to the ‘new normal,’ expecting very satisfactory results.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

I believe that the technological innovation can be extremely useful to the in-house egal and compliance teams. In fact, we can save time by using technological solutions for administrative works, and instead we can dedicate our time to legal issues including brainstorming and discussing ideas.  

In-house lawyers have direct contact with business functions, which means that they can provide legal advice concerning the operations of the company. Notwithstanding, in-house lawyers often spend most of their time supporting administrative matters for other departments instead of being involved in strategic issues or specific transactions. Having technological solutions to execute some of those activities will allow us to free up and to take more challenging and complicated works.