About

Formed in 1997, Madrid-based Spanish conglomerate ACCIONA is a major conglomerate group that is involved in a range of business activities in the infrastructure and renewable energy industries globally. As an IBEX listed company and employing approximately 30,000 people, the main businesses within the infrastructure sector – construction, water and industrial and services – require high levels of legal support to keep it out of trouble in the face of huge scrutiny and large scale projects. The general counsel of the group is Jorge Vega-Penichet, however receiving particular praise for ‘constantly developing innovative and practical solutions to day to day problems, with a clear vision of the business in one of the most competitive and challenging global industries’, the legal team of the concessions department of ACCIONA Group provide comprehensive and multi-jurisdictional protection to one of Spain’s biggest conglomerates. Nominators explained how the team’s ‘practical and flexible’ approach to the business has contributed to the creation of one of the leading global infrastructure groups worldwide. The concessions legal team is led by Jaime de Rivera López de Letona, legal director who oversees a team working in 30 countries across five continents on various PPP infrastructure projects. Working within a company that is immersed in a complex regulatory and economic environment, and which has a multi-jurisdictional presence, the team must have local legal and regulatory knowledge wherever the company have projects, including Spain, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil in addition to emerging markets for the business like Norway, Colombia and the United Kingdom. The team handles this complexity both internally and by making use of excellent management skills too, according to a nominator the team ‘regularly deal with outside counsel and coordinate all the legal work by ensuring compliance with the group’s highest standards’. Crucial to the fortunes of each of the group’s projects, each legal team member works with the business from start to finish to ensure compliance and security. In this sense, their work is described as ‘complex and wide, as they participate in the preparation of all the project documentation, commercial agreements and project finance documents [and] participate in the execution of the legal agreements’.