General counsel | Hyundai Motor Brasil
Eduardo Hirano
General counsel | Hyundai Motor Brasil
Team size: 19
How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?
I view crises as moments to reaffirm Hyundai’s core values, known as the “Hyundai Way,” which include Safety and Quality, Tenacity, Agility, and Data-Driven thinking, among many others. Whether navigating regulatory turmoil, supply chain disruptions, or geopolitical uncertainty, I position the legal department not merely as a risk mitigator but as a strategic business enabler and problem solver.
I believe in anticipatory lawyering: proactively monitoring legal trends, economic signals, and global best practices to ensure the company is prepared to act rather than react. During recent market volatility in Brazil, I led the creation of legal education initiatives to expedite critical decisions, prioritise threats, and coordinate responses across business functions. We updated contract playbooks with adaptive clauses, revised force majeure language, and added multi-tiered dispute resolution tools. This strengthened our legal framework and empowered our commercial teams to maintain momentum with confidence.
Resilience comes from alignment between legal and business. To support this, I ensure the legal team fully understands the company’s strategic goals and integrates them into our own targets and workflows. I involve lawyers in high-level discussions from the start, transforming legal advice into a guiding thread of the decision-making process. Our department operates as problem solvers, guardians of integrity, architects of compliance, and co-pilots of innovation.
What are the major cases or transactions you have been involved in recently?
A recent engagement involved leading the expansion of production capacity under a CKD (completely knocked down) vehicle assembly agreement with key strategic partners in Brazil. The transaction required not only meticulous contract drafting and legal risk assessment but also coordination with production engineering, logistics, and tax specialists to optimise incentives and mitigate operational risks. I designed a buyout and continuity framework that resolved disputes, protected our business model, and opened pathways for more competitive regional exports.
Equally impactful has been our internal legal transformation journey. I have driven continuous improvement initiatives aimed at maximising operational efficiency and the quality of our internal client service. This includes automating litigation workflows, streamlining contract generation, expanding legal data analytics, and developing due diligence templates. We have also invested in team-wide workshops and training programmes to enhance business fluency across the department.
What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?
At Hyundai, sustainability is not a corporate campaign but one of our core principles. From electrification to social equity, we are reimagining what responsible leadership means in the mobility industry. As General Counsel, I act as a steward of our ESG commitments, ensuring that our values are reflected in binding practices and contractual obligations.
I co-led the rollout of our ESG legal framework, which includes supplier audits, ethical labour provisions, environmental safeguards, and transparent governance models. We have embedded sustainability KPIs into commercial agreements and created legal mechanisms to recognise responsible partners while discouraging non-compliance. I have worked closely with the ESG and Government Relations teams to foster a more inclusive workplace and with public affairs to advocate for stronger electric vehicle policies in Brazil.
In your opinion, what are the main trends that are salient in your country currently (these can be legal, political, economy or business-based)?
Brazil is undergoing significant transformation. The long-awaited tax reform, perhaps the most profound in our history, is set to simplify a notoriously fragmented tax system. For multinationals, this will require a complete overhaul of pricing, tax credit recovery, and compliance processes.
On the legal front, data privacy enforcement is evolving sharply, with the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) maturing into a powerful compliance mandate. ESG litigation is on the rise, and regulators are increasingly targeting greenwashing. Politically, there is renewed interest in industrial policy that fosters inclusive innovation, particularly in the mobility and agribusiness sectors.
In short, the Brazilian business environment is fast-paced, highly complex, and full of opportunity. As legal leaders, we are not only adapting to these trends but also helping to shape them.
