About

Fernando Zanetti leads the legal department at Bunge Brasil, a global agribusiness and food company. Zanetti believes that, as legal and compliance director, it is incumbent on him to ‘ensure that the long pipeline of M&A deals are being catered to, and to arrange for the seamless development of all tax, labour, environmental and civil lawsuits filed by or against the company’. He has led a number of strategic projects during his tenure at Bunge Brasil, including the merging of five legal support structures: Bunge Alimentos, Bunge Fertilizantes, Bunge Açúcar e Bioenergia, Fertimport and Moema Group. Zanetti merged these separate entities into one organisation under the leadership of a single CEO thus unifying their support areas. He has been praised for his role in revolutionising the legal structure at Bunge Brasil via the implementation of a two-pillar legal department. The first pillar comprises the allocation of assignments per areas of practice such as litigation, tax, corporate, labour, environmental, contracts, and intellectual property. To create the second pillar, Zanetti focussed on the diversity of Bunge Brasil’s’ businesses and the need for lawyers with expertise in specific areas. Zanetti has drawn particular praise for the fact that Bunge Brasil’s routine demands remained undeterred during a period of major reform; he believes that during this transition period ‘the organisation was not left bereft of legal services’. Whether challenges faced by the legal team are small or large, Zanetti constantly ensures that in ‘all of those situations we were able to provide the best legal guidance to the company in a way to protect the its assets, interests and people’.