About

In addition to providing excellent business support to one of Portugal’s largest companies, Galp Energia’s legal department is also working to ‘change the way in-house lawyers are seen in Portugal’, according to their general counsel, head of compliance and company secretary Rui de Oliveira Neves. Encompassing more than 100 businesses operating in numerous aspects of the petroleum industry, Galp Energia is one of Portugal’s largest companies and achieved an annual turnover figure of €15.5bn in 2015. The legal team has assisted the company in achieving this figure by making sure the numerous exploration and production, refining, marketing and power projects are compliant and run smoothly. Presiding over a department that encompasses both legal and compliance, Neves explains how the ‘legal ecosystem’ reports directly to the CEO and consists of a core team alongside an external law firm panel working worldwide. There are several multidisciplinary teams dedicated to producing the best results possible. Neves explains that they work with universities to source talent straight out of their studies as well as utilising a talent exchange with professors with relevant knowledge and opinions of Galp’s legal issues; on the other hand the company provides lecturers for the universities as visiting scholars. In Iberia, the company employs 15 lawyers based in Lisbon whilst a local Spanish-based team of seven (which supports Galp’s downstream business in the country) reports directly to the Portuguese team. The lawyers in the region were crucial in reorganising the infrastructure part of Galp’s Gas & Power business to segregate it from the rest of the group, due to it being subject to a regulatory authority (all the others are not). The team also played a crucial role in establishing a ‘European medium term notes program of €600m to refinance the business [and] to replace internal financing with bonds (external financing)’. Along with these concerns, the team oversee a number of overlapping M&A transactions spanning various geographical regions including Africa, which Neves calls the biggest challenge for the team in recent years. These transactions were a challenge even for 15 high-calibre lawyers, but Neves claims that the team ‘enjoyed having transactions of this size in their hands’. The confidence in his team’s ability was evident as Neves restricted the panel of external law firms to focus on completing the job in-house. The team has also been busy implementing internal projects, through what Neves calls a ‘business partner approach’ within the organisation; this extends to two team members implementing a compliance program and the aforementioned restructuring where the newly separate business achieved an investment credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. Seeing lawyers as ‘problem solvers’, the team’s culture puts emphasis on ‘excellence’ and Neves is keen to ensure the lawyers of Galp Energia are people who have the qualities of competence and dedication.