A Spanish listed group with operations in the education and media sectors, Grupo PRISA has been in the midst of several recent transactions and litigations that have enabled it to secure its position in the market.

Expertly advising and leading the company through a period of change, secretary of the board and group general counsel Xavier Pujol Tobeña has utilised his legal and managerial expertise to mitigate the challenges posed to the company’s business. Having first joined the Group in 2014, three years later in July 2017 he was appointed to his current role, in which he leads and manages all legal, compliance and regulatory affairs. In the face of demanding and precarious business circumstances, which he states included the company being ‘close to collapse and default’, he successfully led a ‘€560m rights issue in January 2018, the €1.4m debt refinancing in December 2017 and the chairman and board members succession in November 2017 as result of a fight among shareholders in [a] general shareholders meeting’.

As a result of these conditions, he helped oversee a restructuring effort that ‘saw the internal machinations of the team change’. In doing so, a new structure was created that saw ‘the lead in-house teams of the different business units have a double reporting model to the CEO of each business unit and the general counsel group office’. Nominators had high praise for Pujol’s efforts, stating that the restructuring has left the company’s financial horizon ‘looking brighter’ as it looks to the future with a more secure foundation for its business ambitions intact.

Pujol began his career at international law firm Cuatrecasas, and served as a secondee in the London office of Herbert Smith, he subsequently joined Latham & Watkins when it opened its office in Spain in 2007, later working at the firm’s London office. In January 2013 he was appointed counsel at Latham & Watkins and later on in September of the same year he joined PRISA as chief legal officer of PRISA Radio and PRISA Noticias. Since October 2014 he has been deputy secretary of the board of directors of PRISA, while continuing to act as board secretary of both PRISA Radio and PRISA Noticias as well as general counsel in the press and radio units.