Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

At the beginning of this year, Faurecia announced the acquisition of a controlling stake in HELLA, resulting in FORVIA Group and creating the world’s 7th largest automotive technology company. This acquisition has brought the legal department to the spotlight, since we have been involved in raising capital for new ventures and future projects. This year, I participated and lead our legal team in an important loan with several Latin American banks. This transaction is part of the program to finance HELLA acquisition. With this additional funds Faurecia will reimburse part of the remaining amount of the bridge loan used to acquire HELLA. Additionally, we recently announced the construction of our new Campus in Nuevo León. This location will be focused on automotive seating and interiors, bringing its operations closer to customers in the southeastern of United States of America. The new sites will be in Parque Nexxus, in Apodaca, Nuevo León, ten minutes away from the Monterrey International Airport and they represent and investment of 147 MUSD. During this project, I’ve worked closely with the financial and operations team to ensure all the legal aspects of this investment are covered, achieving a positive transformation of the legal department as an ally in every step of the transaction. 

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

Internal legal support remains slightly unknown in its sphere of influence. A legal manager should have strong leadership and communication skills since he or she will be guiding substantially the company’s strategic planning. To consider a legal team strong, it’s necessary to go above and beyond. High performance and productivity are only achieved when commitment is individual but also, when the team members have a global vision. The feeling of belonging to a group, of being valued and of jointly striving for a goal, makes workers motivated and happy, and at the end, this will be reflected in a more effective team. Likewise, to build a strong legal area, we must reinforce the behavior we would like to achieve. If we want to provide a more operations-oriented counsel to our internal clients, we should include key businesspeople in our discussions to accomplish a more valuable impact.

What is the biggest risk to your industry or organisation and how are you contributing to prepare your organization for this?

More than risks, I will call them challenges. Without a doubt the most important challenge is all the sequels that the pandemic has left in the industry. However, this event accelerated the transformation that we had been working on for a few years, which has allowed us to cover the needs of our clients, adapting to the context we currently live in, while at the same time we have been able to implement training strategies for global level that helps the integration of our collaborators.

Mobility is evolving fast, and a continuous transformation and adaptation is part of it. Global megatrends are changing our industry: onboard experiences, automated driving, zero-emissions mobility and sustainable automotive design. To respond to these challenges, FORVIA has a clear strategy and aims to be a change agent committed to anticipating and making the transformation of mobility a reality, and we all, as part of the company and of this changing environment, we should adapt to it. I think that my role, as legal counselor, is to provide the right accompaniment and go beyond, analysing the possible risks that may appear along the way.