About

Appointed legal director of Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Janssen Cilag Pharmaceutical in February 2014, Felipe Alves was previously legal director of the parent group’s consumer division. He regards his most significant achievement in that post to have been shifting the legal team’s mind-set, demonstrating to them ‘that it was possible to be impartial and independent at the same time as being part of the business team. Difficult but totally possible’. This development occurred against the backdrop of efficiency motivated reforms within the department, including a complete reinvention of the contracts procedure and deepening the team’s capabilities with regard to obtaining regulatory authorizations. Externally, he has led on brand divestitures and the implementation of tax initiatives to increase competitiveness, but regards his greatest challenge as dealing with a multimillion-dollar tax litigation. Significantly, he notes that the difficulty was not so much the technical complexity of the case but in demonstrating to the corporate division that the company had a strong case and should not pay the penalty. ‘It’s the legal department’s responsibility to ensure the corporate division grasps the reality of the laws in Brazil and sometimes that can be hard’, he notes. A team player, he enjoys delivering ‘legal solutions that make the difference’. And since his internal clients know that ‘saying no to a business proposal is, in my opinion, the last alternative’, they understand that ‘sometimes it’s necessary for me to have a long-term mind-set so as to defend the integrity of the company’. ‘This understanding’, he says, ‘has allowed us to create an important and trusting relation between internal legal and internal client’.