About

Made up of 19 lawyers in EMEA and 11 in Switzerland, the legal team of LDC boasts an impressive portfolio of completed global ventures and acquisitions in the areas of agriculture, food processing, international shipping and finance. The department is led by EMEA chief legal officer Massimiliano Talli, who leads the Swiss legal team as of June 2019 after previously serving as chief legal officer for Asia and prior to that having served as senior legal counsel for Europe and The Black Sea. The legal department has set up expertise clusters, spreading knowledge through the team and deepening the skills of every individual on the team. Adding to this, in the last two years the legal team has worked on the integration of an arbitration team into the global trade support team and established three transversal centres of expertise, namely, the trade support team, the corporate and M&A team and the global markets and financing team. The legal team is involved in a number of strategic M&A projects and has assisted in the robust growth of the company through acquisitions. Amongst these is the sale of its global metals platform in May 2018 to a China-based investment fund for approximately US$466m. ‘The transaction occurred by way of an auction process, comprising 11 countries throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia and was a key milestone for the group’s strategy of refocusing its portfolio to concentrate on its core businesses’, says Talli. The LDC deal team was led by group general counsel Keir Ashton together with senior counsel for M&A Karen Norris and support from external counsel.