Team size: Six

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?

To hedge ourselves against instability or crises, we rely heavily on data analysis and applied history. A rich understanding of history and legal precedents, a reasonable appreciation of human psychology and behavior, and a broad exposure to current events all contribute to the development of well-informed legal decisions.

In practice, this means breaking down the problem at hand and analysing it bottom-up and top-down, using data and thinking probabilistically. We understand that risk is indispensable to our business strategy and work to better underwrite it. Our main objective is to ensure that Prisma’s portfolio has a sound and robust downside protection structure.

Our deep awareness of Prisma’s target risk posture ensures the legal strategy alignment with the broader business strategy. We know on our core when to be aggressive and when to be defensive, and that is how we add value to the business. Our opinions and decisions seek to consciously achieve the same absolute risk level targeted by the business.

What are the major cases or transactions you have been involved in recently?

Infrastructure assets remain a substantial area of focus of our work, with transactions varying in shape and form, from the straight-forward private credit to the complex capital solutions involving quasi-equity investments.

Prisma’s litigation finance portfolio keeps growing and expanding to different types of cases and jurisdictions, we work close with the business team to develop the legal strategy and select external counsels with the expertise and experience required for each case.

We also have been involved in the discussions to create capital solutions to support newly created SAFs (Brazilian soccer corporations).

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

Being able to collect and digest huge amounts of data to better understand the legal precedents, trends and risks will, in my opinion, reshape the in-house legal profession and the relationship with outside counsel.

Opinions will bring more objective information fed by AI tools and relevant technical information processed by AI. I also believe AI tools will force lawyers to adapt and become more focused on human behaviour and negotiation while also training to be sophisticated prompt riders.

I systematically block my agenda to reserve time for reading and meeting people to discuss new technologies and developments. Just being curious about it and trying to use these new tools is already a great way to stay updated.

In your opinion, what are the main trends that are salient in your country currently?

In 2024, Brazil was the worst performing market globally. Judicial recoveries reached an all-time high of 2,273 filings (the previous record was 1,863 filings in 2016, when Brazil went through a deep recession), with cases projected to grow further during 2025.

We expect DIP (debtor-in-possession) financings in the context of judicial recoveries and short-term capital solutions to companies that have sound businesses but challenged balance sheets to be trends in 2025.