About

Drawing on the expertise of a 16-strong team that includes lawyers, recent graduates and very experienced non-legal professionals, the legal and corporate affairs team at ANA Aeroportos de Portugal offers comprehensive support to the Portuguese airport authority. Managing several airports including Portugal’s largest, Lisbon-Portela, creates a huge amount of work for the legal function especially in the face of recent trends of significant increases in passengers and traffic across the network. Head of legal and corporate affairs at ANA Aeroportos de Portugal is Francisco Sebastian, who describes the team as being ‘great value for the company’ in mitigating these external factors, which he claims raises ‘operational and economic challenges’ for the company. In Sebastian’s words, ‘we focus on providing legal counselling in all processes with tailor-made solutions and learning from previous experiences’. ‘This is done over the scope of the entire organisation, encompassing 10 airport businesses promoting proactivenss and consolidating high standards of compliance an efficiency at all times’. Acting as mediators and focused on producing effective financial and operational outcomes, it was the legal department that took the lead by ‘preparing and monitoring’ an agreement between ANA and a communications operator – bringing an end to 14 separate legal proceedings in 2016 that saw an extremely low litigation level achieved in relation to the potential threat. The team saw that there were no contractual penalties or fines applied, saving the company potentially millions of Euros. In 2015 the department achieved similar settlements, which Sebastian claims ‘fostered the mitigation of the global risk exposure’ of ANA and saw an astonishing €10.6m reduction in the company’s judicial expenses. Concentrating on providing the most comprehensive and complete support possible, Sebastian has overseen the recent expansion and renovation of the legal team, during which time several new young lawyers have been employed. These individuals have brought ‘new ideas, exchanges of experiences and has provided several training opportunities’, all while keeping the day-to-day business support as strong as ever. In addition to the new recruits, the ANA team has promoted modernisation within the whole company by utilising new information and communication technology for contracts and e-procurement, evincing this value-adding legal function’s cutting edge. arising from its operations.