Prysmian Group legal affairs vice president with extensive national and international experience in corporate and commercial legal affairs developed by working for almost 20 years as an in-house business lawyer. His area of expertise entails contract drafting and negotiations, special projects (M&A, joint venture, establishment and management, EPC contracts), judicial and arbitral litigation management, corporate and intellectual property laws and compliance—extensive knowledge of competition laws and significant experience in the field of public and private enforcement.  

After a few years of post-graduation practice in primary law firms in Milan, he joined Pirelli Group in 2003 as in-house counsel within the Group Legal Affairs Department. Further to divesting the Pirelli Group worldwide Cables division to Goldman Sachs Capital Partners in 2005, he joined the Corporate and Legal Affairs Department of the newly established Prysmian Group. Within Prysmian Group, the world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry, he has been holding positions with increasing levels of responsibility, becoming Telecom Business and Italy Legal Affairs Director from July 2011 till June 2018, then Telecom Business and North Europe Corporate Affairs Director from July 2018 till December 2019 and eventually, since January 2020, Group Legal Affairs vice president.  

Law degree from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan (Italy) and admitted to the Italian bar. 

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense? 

We introduced a standard tool to monitor and identify major critical provisions in contracts that allow my team and the business to perform a proper risk assessment and support a mindful decision-making process while ensuring consistency of approach within the team in negotiations with clients. 

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years? 

I envisage two key developments that will impact the way in-house legal professionals work. They are both linked to digitalisation, which will increasingly affect people’s relationships and way of working. It will increasingly be critical to be capable of adapting to manage your team and meetings remotely effectively and, on a long-term basis, managing hybrid relationships more in general with all company stakeholders whilst, at the same time, keep cultivating relationships through in-person meeting opportunities. The second development will be artificial intelligence, which should support in-house counsels to get free from repetitive, low-value tasks and give more time for high-value analysis and advice. 

How would you assess the impact of new technologies on the legal landscape in Italy, and what measures would you propose to leverage these technologies while ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations? 

The impact of new technologies and artificial intelligence could be significant in the legal landscape in Italy, like anywhere else. AI will likely speed up drafting legal papers, reviewing thousands of documents in a limited time, translating, generating, and pre-populating. These and other new solutions can help in-house counsels address capacity constraints, but this is to be carefully monitored to ensure that the quality of the work is not impacted. Legal advisory is not a commodity! 

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment? 

I strongly believe in diversity and inclusion and I am particularly proud to have built a team of people of different backgrounds and nationalities and, hence, different legal expertise. In an international business like ours, diversity brings value and great cross-fertilisation opportunities, enriching all of us both professionally and personally and eventually bringing value to the company ensuring support across different jurisdictions.