About

With LLM’s in corporate law (magnum cum laude) and banking & finance law, the latter from the LSE, plus an MBA from the Fundacão Dom Cabral, Rogério Santos’ academic credentials are as impressive as his private practice experience, which includes leading Brazilian firms such as Levy & Salomão, Souza Cesçon and Tozzini Freire, and also as an international associate at Shearman & Sterling. Moving in-house as senior counsel at diversified metals and mining company CVRD (now Vale), in 2004, since 2008 he has been general manager for projects, antitrust and compliance. As such he has led on the coordination of complex M&A transactions including the $18.9bn acquisition of Canadian nickel mining company Inco; the attempted acquisition of Xstrata in 2008; and more recently, the $2.5bn purchase of Guinean company BSG Resources (2010). And while he relishes the exposure to other jurisdictions that working at a global company offers, he nevertheless suggests that taking on the additional responsibility for antitrust and anticorruption matters (as he did in 2008), has been every bit as challenging as headline deal-making. A decade on from his own private practice experience he feels that law firms need to improve ‘their feeling for, and knowledge about, their client’s actual interests. Each company is different and most of the time law firms provide services that are standardised or offered in a “one-size fits all” manner. They should be able to provide services that are more tailor-made to their clients’, he suggests.