About

Maria Rocha Barros is qualified to practice in the US (New York), UK and Brazil with significant work experience in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia. ‘It is my passion to work with cross-cultural teams and help companies navigate the complex regulatory environment we live in, dealing with different jurisdictions and doing cross-border deals!’ says Rocha Barros. She is based currently in Belgium and serves as the vice president of legal and corporate affairs Europe of leading global brewer AB InBev, better known for its Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois brands. Since joining AB InBev in 2011, Rocha Barros has held a number of positions in New York, Mexico and Belgium, where she has worked on regional M&As and greenfield projects in China and Vietnam as well as transformational M&A deals including the $20bn combination with Grupo Modelo in 2013 and the $100bn acquisition of SABMiller, which went down as the second largest M&A deal of 2015 and the fourth largest M&A in history. She explains ‘Working on the combination with Grupo Modelo, the producer of Corona, and later overseeing the integration process and performance of a number of transition services agreement, was a very challenging and rewarding experience’. Before this deal, she was a board alternate which gave her the experience of sitting in a board of a listed company. Amongst her other achievements, Rocha Barros leads a team of more than 90 legal, compliance, security, government relations, external communications and CSR professionals responsible for over 58 countries in Europe and the Middle East. ‘I am lucky to have a highly engaged team. I am a strong believer in the role a legal department plays in embedding ethics in the operations of the company and my team, with support of senior management and tone from the top, has done an amazing job there. We are present on every key decision the company makes and legal has a seat on every country “management table”’. Additionally, under her leadership, the legal team has created a methodology to quantify the value the team creates and protects every year, which has helped the team to show the copmany’s Europe CEO the value that the department brings. ‘This visibility, besides improving the credibility of the team and effectively communicating what the function “brings to the table”, has enabled better decision making in key commercial files’, explains Rocha Barros. ‘Teams are a lot more powerful than a collection of individuals. We should always hire people better than ourselves and have a team that constantly raises the bar. This methodology helps in doing that and setting a common dream drives the whole team towards achieving great results’. Prior to joining AB InBev, Rocha Barros worked at the law firm, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York, where she advised on cross-border M&A, IPOs, bond offerings, syndicated credit facilities and pro bono matters. Rocha Barros is also a board member of the Association of Corporate Counsel in Europe, the world´s largest community of in-house lawyers. As of May 2019, Rocha Barros will be moving to Booking.com, as senior vice president and chief legal officer, based in the Netherlands.