Team size: 15   

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience? 

As a global legal department, we have an extensive experience in handling crises. Since they have become more frequent and extensive than before, we have developed a flexible crisis management plan: we look for new possible risks, preferably before they become real, and foresee their impact, making strategies to deal with them. This helps in deciding what actions to take and spending resources efficiently. Our legal team collaborates with other departments, such as compliance, PR, and HR, to ensure consistent responses. We give legal guidance to the crisis management team and help in creating communications that balance immediate needs with long-term legal aspects. After the crisis, the legal department, together with Internal Audit, assesses what went well and what didn’t. This helps in improving the crisis management plan and getting ready for future events.  

To ensure a constant alignment with the broader business strategy, you need a mix of basic ingredients, not a magic solution. First, you are required to know the industry well: market, competitors, and how your business stacks up against them. Then, you must keep abreast of the evolution of the whole business process, from customers and suppliers to production and distribution, being mindful of future plans and goals of the company. This helps you be realistic about the business risks and define the legal department vision, mission, and objectives. To deal with budget and resource issues, without giving up on core values, you are often required to come up with creative solutions. This means constantly questioning usual practices and looking for new ways or tools, such as AI, alternative legal service providers, and flexible legal talent, to work better and more efficiently.  

What are the main cases or transactions that you have been involved in recently?   

The main deals have been arrangements for the first applications in Europe of carbon capture technology in the cement sector, along the entire value chain (from production to Co2 transportation and storage). These projects, worth several hundred million Euro for each plant, need a series of interrelated contracts with the separate entities responsible for providing, respectively, Co2 capture, transportation and storage services. In addition, as a kind of essential pre-condition, grants or financial support agreements with the relevant public authorities (such as EU or local governments). All this is being negotiated now to be fully operational only after a few years, to meet the most challenging emission goals set for 2030. This is a real milestone for the cement industry, a deadline we cannot afford to miss. 

How do you measure the impact of ESG initiatives on the company’s overall performance and reputation?  

Two indicators: the constantly increasing platforms that assess your ESG metrics. And your intuition about how well or poorly your company is really performing on sustainability issues. You can evaluate how much an organisation values these issues by yourself. I think we are doing quite well on both fronts. 

How have you integrated technology into your legal processes, and what impact has this had on efficiency and compliance?  

We now work digitally in everything we do. We share documents and information with our team. We call, meet, request services and manage procurement online, we have started experimenting with AI. I think these initiatives and tools help us cope with uncertain times. But to me, people are always the ones who make a difference, not the technology.