Team size : 45

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

We recently completed a complex structured finance transaction involving the securitization of our timeshare businesses receivables portfolio, freeing up cash to strengthen our company’s balance sheet and fund high-return growth. In addition, we are currently structuring a cross-border REIT involving our hospitality assets across Asian and European jurisdictions. Finally, we are completing a de-listing process for our Spanish-listed subsidiary.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

The answer, as always, is to be hyper-sensitive to the needs and priorities of the business. In a serious crisis such as the Covid pandemic, the company required cost-cutting and increased efficiencies in all areas of the business. From a legal team perspective, this meant making difficult choices regarding resources and the team needing to take on additional workloads. At the same time, we shifted our focus to the essential tasks required of us and re-prioritized our work tasks. In times of crisis, flexibility and contextual awareness are critical—to quickly understand what the business needs and deliver this, while at the same time remaining calm, efficient and trusting in your common sense and legal training to continue to deliver strong support to the business even in times of stress and crisis.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

Minor’s success in recent years has been driven by our ability to quickly assess risk, make fast decisions and execute efficiently. In our acquisitions of both Tivoli Hotels in Portugal and NH Hotels in Spain, we faced competition from the major global hospitality players and private equity firms. We were able to outmaneuver them by taking calculated risks and making fast decisions. These were exciting, complex transactions requiring us to work at speed and take advantage of our flexibility to close the deal and beat out far bigger and better-financed competitors.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Agility is a key attribute for modern in-house counsel. So many changes are coming to the business landscape and legal profession—partly driven by AI but also by the massive digital transformation happening in the corporate world. In-house counsel needs to be a strong partner to the business to understand and embrace these changes and also to consider how they will change the role of in-house legal teams in the coming years.