About

Serving as general counsel at Abu Dhabi Ports Company, Emil Pellicer stands out for his strong leadership skills, which have translated to impressive functional improvements to the legal unit. Joining the company as its first general counsel, it was to define the scope of his role. ‘My vision was to integrate the legal team with the commercial and operating teams such that both teams work as an integrated whole,’ he states. ‘In order to achieve this, it was important for me to demonstrate the benefits of integrating my function into the decision-making process at the highest level of the company. Being appointed to the executive committee was a vindication of my vision of how legal can add value throughout commercial and operational processes.’ Pellicer’s work to nurture talent within his team has also been highly impressive, thanks to his outstanding mentoring skills. Developing a highly productive work environment based on help and support has enabled professionals within the team to generate the expertise necessary to provide high quality strategic advice to the business, Pellicer says: ‘I’ve always thought of the in-house legal function akin to a law firm with one client as opposed to being a department whose primary purpose is to procure and manage external legal services. As such, it was essential to ensure that my team evolves with the company and is given the tools to do so. Ensuring that my team and I remain trusted advisors to the company is our number one goal’. As Abu Dhabi Ports Company has experienced exponential growth in the past few years, transforming from being a project company building a new port, to an operator of several ports in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, Pellicer has had to deal with a plethora of challenges. ‘It has been a challenge for us in the legal unit to keep up with this growth without outsourcing all of this new work to external advisors. We are overcoming this challenge by acquiring in-house capability on those legal aspects of the new business lines which occur frequently and outsourcing the rest. The goal is to expand the former,’ Pellicer states.