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?

Crisis is where legal earns its seat at the table or doesn’t. My approach is to get close to the business before things go wrong, not after — you can’t advise well on something you don’t understand under pressure. When instability hits, the instinct in legal is often to slow everything down and cover every angle. I resist that. The job becomes triage: what actually threatens the organisation versus what’s just uncomfortable. I keep a small set of people in the loop, make decisions fast with the information available, and accept that some of them will need revisiting later. Calm is contagious in a crisis, and so is panic — legal has to choose which one it spreads. Resilience isn’t built during the crisis itself; it’s built in the months before, through the relationships and the judgement you’ve earned.

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

In 2024:

I led the legal activities for the establishment of Spike Energy – a company operating in the development of greenfield project for renewable energy generation plants, as well as combined and stand-alone storage systems – by which Tages Helios Net Zero investment fund aims to create a new player in the energy market, capable of identifying and developing, independently or in synergy with third parties, greenfield projects until they reach full construction readiness.

I led the legal activities for the acquisition, following a complex corporate reorganisation, by the Tages Helios Net Zero investment fund of 24 special purpose vehicles that own and manage a portfolio of 151 photovoltaic plants in Italy with a total installed capacity of approximately 122.7 MW. This is one of the most significant transactions in the Italian photovoltaic sector in Y2024.

I led the legal activities for the acquisition of a portfolio of 4 operational biogas plants, to be converted to biomethane, located in the provinces of Pavia and Cremona.

In 2025:

I led the legal activities for the acquisition of a portfolio of two greenfield biomethane production plants. Specifically, two biomethane plants to be built in Puglia and Basilicata, in the provinces of Foggia and Potenza, respectively, were acquired by the Tages Helios Net Zero investment fund.

The biomethane will be produced entirely from the transformation of agricultural byproducts, livestock waste, and agricultural production waste unfit for human consumption. The biomethane produced will be fed into the gas grid through the SNAM delivery point to be built in each plant area.

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

Strategy isn’t something you invent — it’s something you learn, from people who are better at it than you are. I’ve always looked to those ahead of me in this profession and tried, without embarrassment, to imitate what works. There’s no shame in that; pretending you arrived at everything on your own is usually just vanity. What I’ve taken from watching the best is that strategy is mostly the discipline of subtraction. It’s knowing what to leave out, going straight to what actually matters in a negotiation or a dispute, and not hedging every position out of fear of losing something. There’s an old Italian saying — chi troppo stringe nulla abbraccia — grasp too tightly and you end up holding nothing. The lawyers I admire most aren’t the ones who cover every base. They’re the ones who see which base matters and commit to it.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

The growth of people. I have a lot of faith in how far someone can develop if given the right conditions and enough trust — more than most organisations act like they believe. It shows up in how I try to work: giving people real responsibility early, letting them make mistakes without punishing the attempt, pushing them past what they think their role is. I’m convinced a company doesn’t really grow beyond what its people grow into. All the strategy and structure in the world won’t compensate for a team that isn’t being stretched. There’s a line I once read on a wall that’s stuck with me since: “don’t stay where you don’t bloom”. I apply the same logic to organisations — if an environment isn’t letting people bloom, it’s the environment that needs to change, not the people.