As the leading player in the Spanish food sector, Grupo Alimentario Citrus (GAC) currently has six production plants, ten farms covering 1,800 hectares, owns a ten-hectare seedbed, and employs over 1,250 workers producing a total turnover of nearly €240m (2016 figure). Since taking charge of the company’s legal department in 2014 Fernando Bas Marín has contributed to many milestones achieved by the company, such as a landmark deal to purchase of Agromediterránea, GAC’s expansion of baby food products into EU and US markets and an ambitious project to simplify the company’s corporate structure.

More recently, he has impressed with his preparation and training of internal multidisciplinary in-house teams in M&A, as well as the due-diligence and post-merger integration he enacted in order to facilitate the inorganic growth that the company wants to carry out in international markets. ‘The legal department headed by Fernando showed value and contributed to the achievement of the strategic goals marked by the company in terms and conditions satisfactory for its shareholders,’ a source shares.

Prior to his role at GAC, Bas Marín spent a considerable amount of time in the aviation industry, serving as an in-house legal professional at Air Nostrum (franchisee of Iberia) ‘His wide expertise and experience in aviation law and financing earned him respect, and his ability in facilitating consensus among the parties was really appreciated in completing the transactions’, a source comments on this period.