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

Our legal team has been involved in the following transactions: (i) acquisitions of multiple companies and constitution of joint ventures; (ii) purchase of several stone quarries around Spain; (iii) branch establishment and setting up new companies in several countries including Romania, United Kingdom, Poland, Paris, London, Dakar, French Guiana, Athens, and Livorno; (iv) merger of several subsidiary companies of our group.

The implementation of the following new legal framework impacted our company’s business: (i) the new regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (GDPR); (ii) the new Spanish Public Procurement Act, which transposes EU Directives 2014/23/EU and 2014/24/EU, of 26 February 2014; (iv) the latest reforms of the Criminal Code in relation to the liability of legal entities, all of this with the application of the Group compliance program in Spain. All these laws brought significant changes to regulations in force.

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?

The policy of our company is clear: cost reduction and risk minimization. In response to the global crisis of Covid-19, our aim to have a strong and solid revenue and to have as little debt as possible. We prepared ourselves not to be affected by general rise in price of raw materials by not signing contracts at a fixed price.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

In-house lawyers are required to understand the enterprise business to provide more specialised advice to their organisations. In addition, we will have to adapt to the evolution of new technologies by familiarising ourselves with Artificial Intelligence to improve our efficiency, mainly reducing mechanical and bureaucratic tasks. The existing vocal recognition tools are giving greater efficiency and productivity to the performance of our profession. By being a proactive advisor, we can analyse any risks that could impact the company.