Team size: 15

Jurisdictions your role covers: Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and other jurisdictions connected with the Group’s international operations and commercial activities.

How do you manage and coordinate legal responsibilities across multiple jurisdictions from a Portugal‑based role, and what are the main challenges this presents in practice?

Managing legal responsibilities across multiple jurisdictions from Portugal requires combining strong internal coordination with a highly pragmatic and business-oriented approach. In practice, my role involves overseeing legal, governance, compliance and public affairs matters that often have simultaneous implications across Europe, the UK and the US, particularly in areas such as international trade, corporate governance, ESG regulation, competition law and regulatory affairs.

One of the key aspects is ensuring that the legal function remains fully integrated with business decision-making. Rather than operating as a purely reactive support function, we work very closely with management teams, finance, sustainability, operations and commercial areas so that legal analysis is incorporated early into strategic discussions. This becomes especially important in cross-border matters where timing, consistency and alignment between jurisdictions are critical.

Another important dimension is the management of external counsel networks. It is essential to have trusted advisers with strong local expertise, but also to ensure that advice received across jurisdictions is coherent, commercially realistic and aligned with the Group’s overall objectives. In that sense, part of the role is translating highly technical or fragmented legal inputs into clear strategic recommendations that management can act upon efficiently.

The main challenge is probably the increasing regulatory complexity and speed of change, particularly at EU level. Today, legal teams are simultaneously dealing with ESG reporting obligations, sustainability-related regulation, sanctions, trade measures, governance requirements and growing geopolitical uncertainty. Coordinating all these dimensions across different legal systems while maintaining agility and supporting business growth requires a multidisciplinary and internationally minded legal function.

Portugal, however, can also offer an advantage in this context. Portuguese in-house lawyers are often used to operating with relatively lean teams and broad responsibilities, which creates a more adaptable and transversal mindset. That ability to combine legal analysis with strategic judgement is increasingly valuable in international environments.

Is there a recent regulatory or legislative change in Portugal or at EU level that has had a broader impact across your international remit? How has your legal team responded?

At EU level, the recent wave of ESG and sustainability-related regulation has probably had the most significant international impact on our legal function. Instruments such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the broader evolution of EU sustainable finance and environmental regulation are reshaping not only reporting obligations but also governance structures, supply chain management and strategic decision-making across multinational groups.

What makes this particularly relevant is that these developments no longer affect only legal or compliance departments in isolation. They require coordination between legal, sustainability, finance, procurement, operations and investor relations teams, often across multiple jurisdictions and business units. The legal function increasingly acts as an integrator between these different areas.

Our response has therefore focused on building a more integrated governance model internally. We have worked on strengthening coordination between legal, compliance and sustainability functions, mapping regulatory impacts across jurisdictions, reviewing internal procedures and engaging proactively with management and boards on upcoming obligations and risks.

At the same time, we have tried to maintain a balanced and pragmatic perspective regarding regulatory implementation. One of the major challenges today is ensuring that the objectives of sustainability regulation are achieved without creating disproportionate administrative burdens that ultimately reduce competitiveness or innovation capacity within European industry.

In what ways does your legal function contribute to international business strategy, transformation or growth, beyond traditional compliance or risk mitigation?

I strongly believe that modern in-house legal teams should contribute actively to business strategy and transformation rather than being viewed solely through the lens of risk mitigation. In practice, this means participating directly in strategic discussions involving international expansion, regulatory positioning, sustainability transition, corporate governance and stakeholder engagement. The legal function today sits at the intersection between regulation, business operations and public policy, which creates opportunities to add value far beyond traditional legal advice.

For example, in sectors with significant regulatory exposure and international trade dimensions, legal teams increasingly contribute to assessing geopolitical developments, trade measures, sustainability frameworks and public policy trends that may affect competitiveness and investment decisions. In many situations, legal analysis becomes an important element in broader strategic planning.

The same applies to corporate governance and organisational transformation processes. Legal departments are often uniquely positioned to help align governance structures, decision-making processes and internal controls with evolving regulatory expectations while still preserving operational flexibility and business efficiency.