About

When Francesca Secco joined Gruppo Stilo, the investment holding company with a specialisation in commercial and residential property, in 2007, the company’s legal department was non-existent. Her first duty was to establish the function from scratch, setting up all relevant processes and procedures and hiring a highly skilled team of five lawyers. The most challenging aspect of this task, however, was to convince management of the driving role that legal plays, whilst earning the trust of other departments. During the past five years, Secco has made a crucial impact with her work on the opening of three shopping centres; coordinating all legal and leasing activities from land acquisition to opening. The ability and skill of Secco’s team is evident when considering one shopping centre was opened and leased without any help from outside counsel. In her role, Secco constantly works with some of the most important players in the retail and real estate field and at the moment she is working a project that id potentially the largest shopping centre in Europe, Westfield Milano. Prior to joining Stilo, Secco worked at McDonald’s, the fast food chain, in two roles: 2003-2006 as legal consultant and 2006-2007 as franchising manager.