About

Alessandra Ferrari began her in-house career as an in-house counsel at international chemicals manufacturer Dow Italia, where she worked between 1997 and 2003. There she discovered key differences between working in private practice and working in-house, and in particular learned how to interact with internal clients and how to communicate in a clear and crisp manner. She also credits her 13 year tenure at General Electric (between 2003 and 2016), where she covered a number of international roles which exposed her to different cultures and significantly grow as a legal professional, manager and leader. Currently she is group general counsel at Italian utilities company A2A, and is expanding and deepening her knowledge of the energy business, corporate matters and M&A transactions, and she is learning to manage a large, multi-layered team. Since she joined A2A, she has re-organised the team by appointing counsels in business units with direct exposure to the business units’ leaders. She says that she has ‘empowered them driving ownership and accountability, created a compliance team and hired 15 resources. The creation of business counsels, acting as focal points for legal support to the business units, enables the business units’ leaders to receive a more immediate and proactive support’. Additionally, Ferrari has created the “Multi-Utility del Nord”, a large conglomerate of multi-utilities in Northern Italy where A2A is the majority shareholder. She has also worked on an arbitration against Pessina Costruzioni, and been the leader in the drafting, negotiation and implementation of the agreements concerning the transfer of A2A’s shares in its Montenegro subsidiaries.