Key team members:

Isabel Fernandes, General Counsel

Marta Santos, Senior Lawyer

Bernardo Malha, Senior Lawyer

Team size: 15

Jurisdictions your role covers: Europe (Portugal, Spain, UK, Irland, France Belgium, Germany, Italy, Denmark), Africa (Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Princípe, South Africa and Morocco), América (USA, Brazil and Mexico)

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Grupo Visabeira has undergone a transformative expansion following a €200 million strategic investment by Goldman Sachs Asset Management in its subsidiary, Constructel Visabeira. This partnership accelerated both organic growth and a bold M&A strategy, positioning the Group as a market leader in telecommunications and energy infrastructure across Europe and the United States.

Since 2023, Constructel Visabeira has completed and integrated 13 acquisitions across Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, the UK, and the U.S. Notable examples include Cunha Soares & Filhos (Portugal), Verita Telecommunications and Sargent Electric (USA), Tavan Tiefbau (Germany), Groupe Ramalheira (France), and Obelisk Group (Ireland). In 2024, Constructel further advanced its sustainability agenda by acquiring Arquiled and Jayme da Costa (Portugal) and MSP Technologies (UK), enhancing capabilities in renewable energy and ESG-aligned services.

This strategic expansion has been paralleled by a major governance and compliance overhaul, embedding international ESG standards and robust risk management frameworks across the Group.

The 15-member in-house legal team, led by General Counsel Isabel Fernandes, played a mission-critical role in structuring, negotiating, and executing these high-value, cross-border transactions across regulated industries. The team led multi-jurisdictional due diligence, managed regulatory approvals, and coordinated complex financing structures aligned with Grupo Visabeira’s long-term vision. At the same time, the legal department was instrumental in implementing a new compliance framework, establishing the role of Compliance Officer, and operationalising ESG tools such as Watershed to set decarbonisation targets group-wide.

The legal team’s integrated leadership contributed directly to Grupo Visabeira’s growth from €1.45bn in 2022 to €2.2bn in 2024 and its presence in 18 countries. Their work has not only supported the business—it has shaped its trajectory.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

Grupo Visabeira’s legal model is structured to handle a broad range of legal needs internally, with a geographically distributed team operating in Portugal, France, Germany, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Príncipe, and the United States. This international footprint enables the team to manage complex, high-volume, cross-border matters efficiently and confidentially.

We turn to external counsel in situations requiring highly specialised or localised expertise – such as merger control filings, cross-border litigation, or regulatory advice across diverse legal systems. External support is also engaged when the internal team’s capacity is stretched, particularly during large-scale M&A transactions where jurisdictional scope, execution speed, and workload demand scalable legal resources.

Independence is another key driver. In shareholder matters or ESG assurance processes – especially those involving third-party scrutiny or institutional investors like Goldman Sachs – we rely on external counsel to ensure objectivity and reinforce stakeholder trust.

We select external partners who combine legal excellence with industry insight and commercial acumen. Those who collaborate seamlessly and offer responsive, pragmatic advice are highly valued. Performance is assessed not just by legal outcomes, but by their impact on risk mitigation, transaction success, and business value.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

The legal department is deeply embedded in Grupo Visabeira’s strategic planning, ensuring that each business initiative is supported by legal soundness, regulatory foresight, and structural efficiency. The team does not simply approve decisions—it helps shape them.

A recent example of legal leadership was the redesign of Constructel Visabeira’s corporate governance across its European operations. The legal team led efforts to centralise decision-making, streamline board structures, and align governance practices with ESG expectations and investor requirements. This strengthened internal accountability and directly enabled smoother integration of newly acquired companies.

In parallel, the legal team launched a compliance mapping project in response to evolving transparency laws and ESG disclosure obligations. This involved overhauling contract templates, reinforcing supply chain compliance, and conducting cross-border data protection reviews. These forward-looking efforts have kept the Group ahead of regulatory developments while reinforcing its integrity in the eyes of partners, regulators, and investors.

Through these initiatives and many others, the legal team has proven itself not only as a guardian of compliance, but as a key driver of Grupo Visabeira’s sustainable and strategic growth.