About

Planeta Corporación, doing business as Grupo Planeta, is a leading Spanish media group based in Madrid. Managing 16 lawyers and 10 paralegals, Luis Elías serves as the general counsel and a member of the board of directors at Planeta. The highly skilled legal department is led by Elías and three legal directors, with two legal directors responsible for two main business areas, namely, the direct sale and editorial business, and the education area. The other director is in charge of tax matters and each director is supported by three to four lawyers. The legal department also include four experts dealing with compliance matters, as well as team members handling issues such as IPR contracts and IP management. During the last two years, the team has created a content protection department to provide assurance to the authors and content providers, as previously it was difficult to convince them to grant their IP rights for e-books. The legal team has also recently been involved in a number of significant transactions, including the sale of Editis, the second most important publisher in France for €900m, the sale of a corporate building for €210m, the purchase of Rome Business School, and the development of a €30m EBITDA education business in France. The legal team values generosity, trust and compromise. ‘We are a real team, we refuse ego (very common among lawyers) and work with honesty and joy hence we transfer trust to our internal clients’, says Elías.