Patrícia Fonseca leads a team of 14 lawyers and three support staff at Novo Banco, a financial institution created in 2014 by the Bank of Portugal to rescue assets and liabilities of Banco Espírito Santo. An in-house legal professional with in-depth experience in both equity and debt capital markets, as well as extensive knowledge of derivatives securities and banking regulations, Fonseca has been recommended for her efforts in managing cross-border transactions, such as the recent sale of a major Portuguese investment bank to a Chinese investor for approximately €378m.

Fonseca is also well known for her aptitude in liaising with regulatory and supervision authorities on banking and finance, which comes in handy in her role, given Novo Banco’s unique position at the forefront of Portuguese and European financial regulatory affairs. Prior to her work in the in-house legal sector, Fonseca served as a corporate finance associate at Linklaters specialising in M&As, private equity corporate restructuring and corporate transactions.