About

With an LLM in international economic law (magnum cum laude), Maurício Bezerra has extensive experience having worked at consultants Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers and financial institutions including Standard Bank and Merrill Lynch. Joining Odebrecht in 2005 to lead the tax and finance team of the company’s Braskem unit, he is currently general counsel of Odebrecht Ambiental. He restructured the corporate governance area to enhance communications between shareholders and stakeholders and, having outsourced day-to-day work, has sought to push the 20 members of his legal team to be more involved in the company’s strategic issues. He takes pride in having managed, and successfully settled, Odebrecht’s largest liability, and also in undertaking a pair of equity offerings totalling more than R$600m. Motivated by ‘the possibility of playing an important role in the company’s executive team and helping to remove obstacles, foster business objectives in a pro-active manner while ensuring the company maintains the highest standards of legal and governance behaviour’, he makes a clear point regarding external counsel, believing that law firms should be ‘more pro-active in sharing innovative and alternative legal structures with different clients’.