About

The Portugal-based legal team of Novo Banco is led by head of legal department Patrícia Afonso Fonseca who reports directly to the board of directors. The legal team is composed of 21 members; 18 lawyers and three support staff and is organised into four areas: Business (led by Rosário Costa Gomes) and litigation, projects and central areas, (led by Alexandra Gaspar) and labour. Additionally, the department also provides direct support to the executive board of directors. ‘We are a highly resilient team with a high level of focus on delivery while aiming to offer business minded solutions. The latest challenging years faced by the Bank demanded a legal team with a pragmatic approach that could make things go forward, oriented to solve problems while ensuring a high technical quality’, says Fonseca. The team recently faced a 30% reduction of FTE’s in 2016 and despite recent hires, the current number continues to stay below the industry benchmark. ‘With a lower average seniority and in a crisis environment, the response of the team in the last years to the new challenges was impressive, providing legal assistance to the Novo Banco group and covering a significant number of areas, including post resolution measure related work such as regulatory, litigation and M&A’, says Fonseca. The legal team has also worked on the sale of 75% of the capital of the bank to Lone Star, internally coordinating the legal work stream regarding two sale processes with several investors, dealing with different stakeholders and constraints.