Team size: Three
Major legal advisers: Cuatrecasas, Miranda & Associados, Vieira de Almeida & Associados

What are the most significant cases or transactions you have been involved in recently?

In the last year, we were involved in several M&A projects and though some were not successful, the legal team displayed great effort and participation in these projects. Fortunately, we closed one acquisition for a packaging company. Internally, we also did work in the corporate governance, compliance area and enacted several policies concerning privacy and whistleblowing. We also reviewed our alcohol and drugs policy and did some work in real estate too. We provided legal support to all our companies as well, in terms of their development. For our industry companies, we looked at several contracts with clients operating in the automotive industry and closed some contracts for the operation of gas stations in the country too.

Has your company been impacted by Covid-19? And if so, how are you looking to safeguard the long-term health of the business going forward?

Our company is involved in several economic areas. The energy sector has been impacted because there are rules which determine the pricing of LPG bottles, and this cap on prices has had some impact in our business. The energy sector has been impacted by more diverse factors than Covid. It has been impacted by the increase of the costs of the product which, as everyone knows, is now very high. This trend has been further amplified by the war in Ukraine. On the other hand, we experienced an increase in the demand for some products, for example coffee capsules, for which we are one of the major producers in Portugal. Production increased because more people were at home due to remote working and movement restrictions. So, the impacts were varied because there was a reduction in production in some areas like the automotive industry and then an increase in others. The most critical impact however would be on raw materials, accessibility, and pricing.

What skills in your opinion, will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

They must be flexible and open to new ideas and technologies. Speed is also increasingly important, especially over the past two years when so much legislation influencing operations was coming out on a weekly basis. For us, one of the greatest impacts was felt in our gas stations, because of legal constraints on the sale of alcohol and others. Legislation would come out on weekends and the legal team would have to immediately assess the impact on our operations. It is also imperative as legal counsel to have a generalist approach, and use their legal instinct to identify specific issues and the adequate resources to resolve it, if it is in a niche area.