The lawyer Luis Enrique de la Villa Gil, Bocconi University Professor Emanuele Lucchini, the legal consultancy division at Banc Sabadell, and the Financial Times in collaboration with RSG Consulting are this year’s winners in the tenth edition of the Aptíssimi Business Law Awards, organised by the ESADE Alumni Law Club. The awards will be presented to the winners at a ceremony in Barcelona on 8th June.

The winners of the Aptíssimi Awards are chosen by a panel of judges comprising representatives of major law firms, companies and collaborating institutions of ESADE. The awards recognise professional achievement in several categories that reflect the professional, corporate and academic facets of business law. A new category – Insignis Alumnis – has also been added this year. The winner will be chosen by the attendees at the awards ceremony from among four finalists: Rubén Ferrer, Managing Partner in the New York office of Gómez-Acebo & Pombo; Gerard Guiu, Director of Public Affairs and Institutional Relations for New York at FC Barcelona; Juan Antonio de Rueda, Corporate Affairs Director at the Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company; and David Sancho, CEO of Mango for East Asia and India.

Recognition of excellence

At the awards ceremony on 8th June, Luis Enrique de la Villa Gil will receive the Aptíssimi Award in the category of outstanding professional career. The panel of judges highlighted his high-profile career in the field of labour law and social security. The award recognises Mr. de la Villa Gil for his extensive bibliographic contributions to the field, his work training jurists, and his performance as a lawyer, a profession which he has practised from a more social perspective of business law. The judges had similar praise for Emanuel Lucchini, Professor of Private Law at Bocconi University.

In the category of best legal consultancy, the award will go to Banc Sabadell. The judges praised the bank’s legal team for its participation in high-level strategic decisions, which have created value for shareholders. In multiple acquisitions carried out recently by Banc Sabadell in Spain, the legal team has demonstrated its capacity to respond to growing and ever more complex needs in the market and to decisively intervene in multi-jurisdictional transactions of great complexity and high added value. Examples include the incorporation of Mellon United National Bank and Lydian Private Bank, the takeover of TSB, and the creation of a new bank in Mexico.

Finally, the award for the best contribution to the business law sector will go to the Financial Times, which, in collaboration with RSG Consulting, has recognised innovative practices in the sector through a project that encourages law firms and other players to rethink their work. As the judges for this year’s Aptíssimi Awards noted, the sector is experiencing one of the most challenging periods in its history, and the FT-RSG research project has the potential to spread best practices throughout the legal community – to in-house legal teams and outside counsel alike – to help them advance in today’s highly competitive market.

Key event for the business law sector

The Aptíssimi Awards have emerged as the highest-profile annual event in the Spanish business law sector. The award ceremony, to be held on 8th June in Barcelona, will bring together more than 200 representatives of major law firms and corporate legal teams, as well as government lawyers, notaries, registrars, judges and other business law professionals.

In previous editions of the Aptíssimi Awards, the winners in the various categories have included the lawyers Antonio Garrigues Walker, Rodrigo Uría, Fernando Pombo and José Pedro Pérez-Llorca; the scholars Franz Werro, Barry Carter, David O. Wilkins and Alberto Bercovitz; the office-management guru David Maister; and the legal teams at Abertis, Inditex, Ferrovial and Repsol; as well as important legal institutions such as the Spanish Supreme Court, the Spanish Government Attorneys’ Office, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The sponsors of this year’s edition of the Aptíssimi Awards are: Iterlegis, Randstad, BakerMcKenzie, Clifford Chance, Cuatrecasas, Deloitte Abogados, EY Abogados, Garrigues, Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, Grant Thornton, KPMG, Latham & Watkins, Manubens, Osborne Clarke, Pedrosa Lagos, Pérez-Llorca, Roca Junyent, Rödl & Partners, Rousaud Costas Duran, Uría Menéndez and Vialegis. Other collaborators include Allen & Overy, Anzizu López y Castellanos, Euroforo Arasa de Miquel, BDO Abogados, CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo, Crowe Horwath, DLA Piper, Esteban & Ustrell, Font Abogados y Economistas, Freshfields, Jausas, Linklaters and Santiago Mediano Abogados.