About

A part of the Portuguese industrial group Cemap and named on the Portuguese Stock Index 20 (PSI-20), Secil is a construction materials company mainly involved in the production of cement and other building materials. Over the course of its 90 year history, the company’s operations have expanded considerably; it now meets more than 35% of the Portugal’s demand for cement as well as owning and operating plants in several countries across several continents. With four lawyers and one administrative member of staff, led by legal director Filipe Pereira Coelho, the Secil legal team’s mantra is to provide ‘fast, cost effective’ legal services to encompass a variety of international M&A transactions, as well as the day-to-day protection of the group across its range of operations including a recent internal restructuring effort. Coelho describes two ‘evolutions’ that have affected the structure of the Secil legal team; the first being the merging of all of the company’s businesses in Portugal into one structure, which was completed in 2014. The second evolution was the division of support to the group based on geographical considerations, as Coelho explains: ‘[we started the process to] divide or clearly separate the support to the group at a corporate level, the operations abroad and the local operations in Portugal’. The team is currently playing an essential role in the restructuring of the company, being ultimately responsible for establishing ‘a common standard for governance and corporate structures all over the group’, according to Coelho. This is one of the main challenges for the team in the upcoming years as the company seeks to revolutionise its business, a period that Coelho calls ‘starting a new era’ as they shift from a ‘Portuguese company with operations abroad’ to a ‘multinational company’. Responsible for ‘redesigning processes within the legal department and across the group’, the organisational skills to take the lead on these initiatives are a testament to the trust the company has in the legal team. The team is represented and is accountable to shareholders in a direct sense, as Coelho acts as the secretary of the board of the executive committee, reporting directly to the CEO. This hugely experienced team has ‘great capacity to work independently’ according to Coelho, which perfectly suits the dynamic business of Secil and benefits from their provision of quick and efficient legal advice.