Having practiced as a lawyer for over a quarter of a century, Alberto Ferrández Barturen brings an outstanding level of expertise to the in-house legal function of Elecnor Group company Celeo. He first joined Elecnor in 1998, after previously working at a number of highly-regarded law firms including Allen & Overy, and first became head of legal for Celeo in 2009.

When discussing career highlights with the company, he mentions ‘the rare dual project bond issuance we made in May 2017’, and goes into further detail on this: ‘The US$600m transaction was registered under 144A/RegS format (New York law) and local bond format (Chilean law). The liquidity of the capital markets at the time made us explore and analyse the opportunity of taking advantage of the existing liquidity with the aim of extending the tenor of the current financing projects of our assets (project finance) and also benefit from the current low interest rate in the form of a more stable leverage, through a project bond financing structure. As a result, the legal team contributed with legal assistance on the strategy and implementation of a project bond financing as an alternative to the more traditional project finance’. The deal was highly successful, and received plaudits in multiple categories across various platforms of the financial industry press.

As well as this, Ferrández is proud of having created ‘an excellent, enthusiastic and cooperative legal team capable of providing legal responses to all the needs of the company, from the simplest local legal issues to the most complex cross-border projects’. To achieve this, he adopted a painstakingly detailed approach to organising his team. ‘I am very concerned with providing high-quality service and practical legal advice’, he explains.

‘Good drafting is a top priority, and in order to offer the best legal services to the company we try to follow the best practitioners in the legal profession by attending seminars and conferences by top law firms regularly. We devote substantial time and efforts to mitigate legal risks, and our strategy is based on risk prevention’, Ferrández concludes.