Team size: 13
Major legal advisers: Portugal (Vieira de Almeida; Morais Leitão, PLMJ; CS Associados; Abreu Advogados), United Kingdom and Ireland (DWF), Denmark and Sweden (Bird & Bird), Germany (Casimir, Vogt & Weinreich), Italy (E&Y – Studio Legale Tributario), Spain (Moore ACPM Asesores Jurídicos y Tributarios), France (Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP), Belgium (SRL TRICART Avocat et Associés).

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

Constructel Visabeira, a subsidiary of Portuguese multinational and multi-sector holding company Grupo Visabeira, has signed an investment agreement for €200m in growth capital from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, in exchange for a minority equity stake in 20221. This investment deal further accelerated organic growth of the company and allowed us to undertake targeted M&A. Constructel Visabeira, as a leading service provider in the telecommunication and energy sectors with more than 40 years of experience, implemented the full fibre solutions with the roll out of 5G networks, IoT solutions, data centres and the evolution of electricity and gas network infrastructures. To assist the next stage of growth, Grupo Visabeira partnered with a well-known global investor to help .

Grupo Visabeira has elected to partner with a well-known global investor to assist their subsidiary to the next stage of growth while maintaining its independence. The in-house legal team took part in the initial discussions between high up management of the company and their external corporate finance advisors of the competitive investment process who advised us for the investment structure as well as the profile of the target investors. Once the investment offer by Goldman Sachs was accepted by the company, we led the entire process of legal due diligence while being an active participant of the discussions around the transaction documents towards the investment contracts as well as the implementation of all the outstanding pre-completion procedures.

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

The team shall develop a genuine business insight by always assessing and understanding the way projects are operated as well as the strategy and main objectives of the business, effectively communicating the risks and legal constraints involved in any decision.

On general counsel/head of legal side what we have been seeing is that functionalities have increased in number and being a team leader and expert manager has become equally as important as being the top legal adviser (top management and leadership skills for general counsel has become also relevant within the role of in-house lawyer). In fact, general counsel are becoming more high-profile in the business, leading on corporate governance, compliance and overall risk management, reporting usually directly into the Board and have more of an outward-facing role.

Therefore, general counsel/head of legal shall be “more than just a lawyer”, to differentiate itself and ultimately to secure its own success. General counsel today shall bring more than legal expertise, acting increasingly as legal and business advisors to the CEO and senior leadership team.

For such, general counsel should possess broader knowledge than legal, meaning general counsel shall have a broader business knowledge and a wider skill set (eg. influencing and negotiation skills; accounting and financial sound knowledge; acting as business-savvy advisors), enabling them to participate in leadership discussions of complex problems and creative solutions. To develop business perspective, lawyers must seek out opportunities to learn more about the enterprise and the industry, by for example moving legal staff to work closing with operational teams or into general management assignments to broaden their knowledge.

Secondly, general counsel should think broadly about the business and shareholder value. General counsel thinking should be broader than purely legal matters to consider the longer-term impacts on the business strategy and shareholder value of a transaction, litigation, or other corporate matter (rather than a short term legal impacts).

Thirdly, they must become proactive, in finding opportunities and not be afraid of tough, complex projects. These experiences also can help to build emotional intelligence, maturity and judgment, which are crucial to becoming a better leader.

Lastly, they must develop learning agility to expand their business knowledge and develop leadership skills, legal talent who aspire to be general counsel must learn from a variety of experiences. This requires learning agility, which may be defined as the willingness and ability to learn from experience and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions.