Team size: 4

What are the most significant cases, projects, or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

Starlight Energy, part of the NextEnergy Group, is a pure developer of renewable energy projects. Our legal work is very close to the core of the business as developing projects, reducing their risk profile and bringing them to market. Over the last year, my team has worked on several significant transactions:

· Sale of one of the largest agrivoltaic projects in Italy eligible to benefit under PNRR;

· Sale of a BESS portfolio in Romania;

· Ongoing M&A process concerning a medium-to-large-scale PV portfolio in Italy, structured through a holding-level sale, with project risk management mechanisms continuing after closing;

· Ongoing disposal of a portfolio of wind projects in Italy;

· Two financing transactions supporting development activities in Canada and Italy.

In these matters, the role of GC starts from the NBO stage, along the transaction structure, leading negotiations, coordinating external counsel, identifying and managing material risks, preparing internal reporting and ensuring that corporate powers and approvals are properly addressed.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

For a pure developer, market instability is very tangible and recent regulatory and political changes in the relevant markets have increased the instability. When buyers become more prudent, the transaction does not simply become slower; it becomes legally and commercially more complex. The risk profile of the project is examined more closely, and items such as permitting, grid access, bankability and construction timing become even more sensitive.

My approach is to keep the legal team very close to the business, so that we can understand the real status of each project and translate that into the right contractual structure. In practice, this means working carefully on conditions precedent, representations and warranties, indemnities, post-closing obligations and risk allocation mechanisms. The aim is not only to protect the company, but to help the deal remain credible and executable.

General counsel often speak of the need to be strategic to reach the pinnacle of the profession. What does being strategic mean to you?

For me, being strategic means being involved early enough to make a difference. A GC should not arrive only when a document needs to be reviewed or a risk needs to be formally recorded. The real value comes when legal analysis helps shape the commercial route, the negotiation strategy and the internal decision-making process.

This is particularly important in a company such as Starlight Energy, where M&A transactions are not only legal processes, but key moments in which development work is converted into value and project risks are tested by the market. Being strategic means understanding where the business is trying to go, what the buyer is really concerned about, which risks can be accepted and which risks require a different structure.

It also means changing the way we work with external counsel. In complex transactions, law firms are most effective when the GC creates a real partnership with them. External lawyers bring technical excellence, but the in-house lawyer must transfer the business context, internal priorities and project-specific sensitivities that they may not otherwise fully see. Only then does external advice become truly useful for the company.

Finally, being strategic means leading the legal team with trust. I try to look at each member of the team not simply as a lawyer, but as a person performing an in-house legal role, with individual ambitions, strengths and areas for growth. Giving people exposure, responsibility and room to gain experience is essential if the legal function wants to grow with the business.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

From my perspective, working as GC of a focused development platform such as Starlight Energy, the modern in-house counsel must understand where the company creates and protects value. In my role, this happens mainly through M&A transactions, which are not only sale processes, but also crucial de-risking moments for the company.

When a renewable energy project is brought to market, legal work helps transform development risk into a structure that investors can understand, assess, and accept. Permitting, grid access, bankability, construction timing, contractual risk allocation and post-closing obligations all affect the value and saleability of the project.

This requires technical competence, but also business proximity, judgement, and independence. In my experience, this balance is what allows the legal function to move beyond a traditional compliance role and become part of the execution of the company’s business model.