About

Catarina Sousa Rodrigues, head of legal counselling and litigation, leads a highly skilled in-house legal team at Ageas Portugal comprised of 15 lawyers, with specialists in legal counselling, litigation and paralegal work. Each division, in turn, has a team supervisor that coordinates the team assigned to each division and reports to Sousa Rodrigues. Multinational insurance company Ageas was established in Portugal in 2005 through a partnership with Millenniumbcp that granted a controlling stake and management control of the insurers comprising Ocidental Group. More recently, with the aim of increasing its non-life insurance business, Ageas acquired AXA insurance operations in Portugal in a deal concluded in mid-2015. Since the latter acquisition, a gradual process of integration of departments and of internal processes has been taking place. In that regard, the structure and the composition of the legal department is the outcome of the merger of two different legal departments (Ocidental and AXA), a process concluded at the beginning of 2017 and that entailed significant changes in terms of structure and people. In parallel, similar integration processes have been occurring throughout the different departments of the group which often requires the team’s assistance in terms of establishment of new policies and procedures. Conversely, the legal department has also been requested to be involved in the establishment of new partnerships, following Ageas’s strategic decision of building strong partnerships that are insurance related, but not necessarily confined to it. As a result, new non-insurance companies have emerged within the group, increasing everyday workflow, but also raising the need of deepening expertise in other legal subjects, such as health law or pharmaceutical law, a challenge the team has risen to. Other major achievements of the team recently include advising on the investment by Ocidental Vida in two existing shopping centers in Portugal (Maia and Guimarães) in partnership with SonaeSierra, the international real estate developer and investor specialised in shopping centers. It also advised on the company’s establishment of new headquarters in Lisbon and Porto. The team has also advised on a joint venture partnership agreement with Grupo Montellano for the creation of a network of Médis dental clinics that launched Médis into the provision of healthcare services and a deal with the Friends of Coliseu of Porto Association that granted Ageas naming rights and other advertising rights over the historic theatre in Porto. Sousa Rodrigues identifies that ‘cooperation, sharing and open discussion in search of the best solutions, makes the team and each of its members grow, in experience and knowledge, allowing to respond to the needs and challenges of the activity’.