About

Stefano Brogelli’s first experience as an in-house counsel was at Asja Ambiente Italia, a medium sized company active in renewable energy, and was a very instructive one. There he had the task of creating the legal function from scratch and was directly involved in the business processes. He said that it was ‘very stimulating to contribute to the set up and go-live of the first Kyoto Protocol (CDM) projects in China and South America’. He then moved to UniCredit, the pan European financial institution, which allowed him to work in a very structured – although dynamic – environment, as well as teaching him how to conduct business in a highly regulated sector. He had the possibility to work on very complex, multi-jurisdictional transactions like the disposal of BPH and the acquisition of ATF Bank, as well as New Smith Financial Products. In his current role of legal and compliance director at Axpo Italia, Brogelli has contributed to the expansion of business strategy which has seen the company become a market leader in energy trading and one of the most dynamic players in the energy retail business. Additionally, Axpo has recently strengthened its collaboration with Coop, Italy’s largest retailer, where Brogelli’s team set up a reselling scheme. Thanks to this initiative, Coop is now able to supply its 8.5 million customers with power and gas. In order to further secure this relationship, Axpo has entered into the shareholding base of Coop’s power retail vehicle business with a minority share, having negotiated a shareholders’ agreement regulating Axpo’s financial contribution to the project through a mechanism of put and call options. Last year Axpo terminated two project finance contracts, on the basis of which Axpo built up its 1600MW CCGT capacity. Accordingly, the team has been involved in the restructuring of the main contracts related to the two power plants and the related corporate refinancing. Describing his leadership style, Brogelli says that he has ‘a natural problem solving attitude, and I try to work on the approach of the entire team towards internal clients. Today business and other staff functions acknowledge we are here to provide solutions to their needs and often ask us for contributions that go beyond simple legal or compliance answers’. Further demonstrating his utility to business colleagues, Brogelli introduced the use of a collaborative IT platform to work with external law firms. As the platform is connected with the company’s CRM and ERP systems, this saw a reduction in internal work to transfer relevant information to external firms. On top of that, data analytics give the possibility to monitor and extract useful information with respect to the internal team’s performances and as well as those of its external firms. A nominating source had high praise for Brogelli’s professionalism, stating that: ‘Notwithstanding his relatively young age, Stefano Brogelli is one of the most successful and reputable Italian general counsels. He is not only a very talented corporate lawyer, but he has also an in-depth knowledge of the energy industry at large. Moreover, he is widely recognised by his team members and the external lawyers working in the energy space as a wise, capable and very fair manager’.