About

For Canadian company Brookfield Infrastructure, its ability to handle complex transactions is essential to its contrarian-thinking strategy of investing in regions where capital is scarce, such as Brazil and Latin America in general. Its Brazilian legal team is headed by vice president and lead counsel Fernando Ziziotti and its capacity to analyse and mitigate the critical legal and compliance risks of often multiple simultaneous transactions ‘is the result of its model of global teams, where specialised knowledge is shared cross-border, where needed’, according to Ziziotti. Joana de Marsillac, who is vice president, compliance risk and operations for the company’s Brazilian business, joined the legal team in 2012 to support Ziziotti and the legal team in the wake of new opportunities to permit a targeted focus on corruption risk, both regarding new transactions and Brookfield Brazil’s existing portfolio. ‘The team’s commitment to bringing compliance to the forefront of Brookfield’s acquisition strategy has helped contribute to the firm’s success in Brazil and Latin America more broadly in recent years’, says de Marsillac. Another important member of the team is legal manger Bernardo Taier who has strong experience of working in capital markets and M&A lawyer Jandra Muñoz Rivera. The team has successfully executed some of the largest M&A transactions in the region, including the $5.2bn acquisition of NTS Petrobras gas pipelines, the stalking horse bid for the Invepar stake owned by the distressed construction conglomerate OAS and the investment of approximately $2.8bn to create a 4,200km electricity transmission platform through a joint venture with the ACS Group. Other impressive deals the team demonstrated its skill on are the acquisition of a majority stake in Peruvian toll road consortium, Rutas de Lima from Odebrecht, and Brookfield´s $768m acquisition of the largest private water and sewage company in Brazil, Odebrecht Ambiental. Summing up the legal team’s outlook Ziziotti says, ‘Brookfield Infrastructure’s small but highly skilled in house legal and compliance team in Latin America has its main base in São Paulo and leverages Brookfield´s global and local knowhow and the support of top external advisors to efficiently deliver on an active M&A pipeline and manage the legal issues of a significant portfolio in the region’.