Team size: Three

Major legal advisors: Linklaters; VdA

Jurisdictions your role covers: Portugal: Spain

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in? (Please mark anything confidential clearly, and feel free to speak in general terms if you wish, we’re just trying to describe the sort of work your team has been engaged with over the past year) 

The Department I lead has as its mission to ensure legal counsel and regulatory and corporate compliance within the Semapa Group and its portfolio companies, particularly regarding its main holding companies, providing specialised legal advice, within areas of corporate, financial, civil and capital markets law, corporate governance, responsible business conduct, and regulatory compliance, while promoting the strengthening of the governance model and guaranteeing support in decision-making, particularly of a strategic nature and the protection of the Group’s interests, as well as the coherence and effectiveness of corporate and governance processes, while also assuming a role of legal and ethical authority within the organisation.

Regarding main projects recently carried out, the department I lead developed a pioneering project to establish the framework for Semapa’s legal and governance operating model and its relationship with the entire portfolio. I also highlight the sale of Secil, a particularly significant and transformative transaction, concluded across 2025 and 2026. Given its scale, this operation required, and will continue to require, ongoing adaptation and new strategic proposals to achieve the best possible outcomes from a legal and governance perspective. It represents a milestone for Semapa and clearly reflects the Group’s active approach to portfolio management: building, developing, and enhancing businesses with a long-term perspective, while taking strategic decisions. In this context, the Department has played, and will continue to play, a necessary and pivotal role in supporting this strategy and in underpinning the formal structures required by this new chapter in the Group’s development.

What do you value most in external advisers working alongside your team: sector knowledge, responsiveness, innovation, or something else? 

What I value most is a deep understanding of our business and operations, combined with pragmatic and well-grounded advice. Advisers who truly grasp the context in which we operate are better placed to anticipate issues and offer solutions that are immediately actionable. Equally important is the ability to pair technical rigour with creative thinking while keeping risk properly managed.

In what ways has technology or process innovation changed how your legal team operates? 

Technology and process innovation have become essential to how our legal team operates. Given the scale of our responsibilities and the complexity of the matters we handle, it would be difficult to conceive our work today with such a lean team without the support of digital tools, stronger knowledge management and more structured processes. These allow us to work more efficiently, ensure consistency across the group and focus our time on higher-value legal and strategic matters.