About

As a leading retail group operating a wide portfolio of companies, Sonae has the largest private workforce in Portugal. The group creates value across several geographic areas through its main ventures Sonae Sierra and Sonaecom, as well as its other market leading brands. With a presence in over 60 countries and approximately 40,000 employees, the Sonae Employment Law Department has a significant number of matters to attend to at any one time. One nominator praised the department for its ‘multidisciplinary team of proven employment law specialists with exceptional results’ and highlighted its ‘great capacity to solve the different labour conflicts typical of each state market, from an internationally single management, knowing how to combine a unitary identity with each labour market characteristics’. Marta Azevedo heads the ‘highly ethical and effective’ Employment Law Department of four in-house lawyers in Oporto and one in Madrid. In addition to having its efficiency sustained on procedures rooted in lean office principles, the small team is able to manage its vast remit of legal matters with ‘high quality in the legal knowledge, the vision of the items and the high capacity to react and implements solutions’. Some of the achievements of the team in 2016 include a merger by the incorporation of three companies, around 450 disciplinary and judicial procedures, and resolving disputes in Portuguese and Spanish Courts (including the Supreme and Constitutional Courts). To date the team has achieved a staggering success rate of 97% in litigations. Despite Sonae’s diverse portfolio, the team has seamlessly begun providing counsel to other companies in which Sonae has corporate shares – namely Solinca, companies in its hotels portfolio and Sistavac. Summing up what makes the team so highly regarded, one source says ‘it is a team with high skills, availability and efficiency, which results in favourable results for the organisation it represents’.