Carmina Campos Pina

Carmina Pina is a Managing Associate in the Lisbon office specialising in Litigation, Arbitration & Investigations, bringing over a decade of experience across the practice’s three core areas. 

Focusing on banking, financial services and investment funds disputes, Carmina has successfully represented a diverse client base in complex, high-profile disputes across state courts and international arbitral tribunals, her expertise spanning all contentious and pre-contentious advisory work.

Carmina has extensive experience in contentious regulatory matters, comprising both risk management and representing clients in reputationally sensitive matters including regulators' investigations, disciplinary proceedings and supervisory interventions, both at domestic level and involving foreign enforcement authorities (U.K. and U.S.A.).

Carmina is part of Linklaters’ ESG Group, working within a cross-practice and cross-jurisdictional team in the rapidly changing ESG space. She is also deeply involved in various innovation and legal technology initiatives at the firm, including the European Innovation Forum, a pan-European group aimed at leveraging technology use and to drive change across the practice. 

Work highlights

• Advising and acting on behalf of Novo Banco in several disputes related to Novo Banco’s incorporation as the first bridge bank in Portugal following the banking resolution of Banco Espírito Santo.
• Advising and acting on behalf of Novo Banco in several matters pertaining the management of its contractual relationships with Venezuelan State-owned customers, following Venezuela’s constitutional crisis, including strategic and regulatory guidance as well as court representation in several court proceedings, including a c. € 1.3 billion lawsuit brought by the Venezuelan entities.
• Successfully representing two Portuguese banks in over 60 court proceedings pertaining to miss-selling of financial products, brought both by retail and corporate clients (including a standalone € 180 million claim launched by the world’s largest cork processing group), in a novel and untested regulatory background. 
• Advising and acting on behalf of a global investment management firm in disputes related to the purchase and development of one of Portugal’s largest shopping centre.
• Advising and acting on behalf of a big four audit firm in the context of the first regulatory investigations launched by the Portuguese Securities Commission (CMVM) since this entity has supervising powers over auditing firms in Portugal. 
• Advising and acting on behalf of a big four audit firm in the context of an internal investigation (and later SEC investigation) into bribery and facilitation payments in Angola.
• Advising E.ON in an claim filed with the European Court of Human Rights regarding an award issued by the Portuguese Supreme Court in relation to a wind farm located in Portugal, in which E.ON holds a 45% shareholding.
• Representing Pfizer on several matters, including dozens of arbitration proceedings related to the infringement of patents for different active substances and regulatory aspects related to marketing authorisations.

Carmina started her professional career at Linklaters, joining the firm as a Junior Associate in 2012. She is a Managing Associate since 2021 in the Litigation, Arbitration & Investigations Department.

Passionate about how technologic development can re-shape the legal services landscape, Carmina is part of the European Innovation Forum and has participated as speaker in a panel on Artificial Intelligence in International Arbitration at the Portuguese Arbitration Association annual conference. Carmina also participated as a speaker at the European Commission’s Financial Services Users Group annual meeting, to discuss the non-performing loans market in Portugal.

Underscoring her commitment to innovative areas of the law, Carmina is part of Linklaters’ ESG team, participating in several domestic and cross-border initiatives on the topic, and participated as a speaker in the first conference dedicated to ESG Litigation to be held in Portugal.  

Carmina regularly works on the firm’s pro bono and community investment initiatives, including: 

• participating in Bobby Moore Amicus Brief project (a brief filed in support of a petition to the U.S. Supreme court to hear the case of Bobby Moore, whose death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court after nearly 40 years on the death row);
• participating in the preparation of reports on immigration rights for the United Nations Committee for Human Rights; 
• reporting on prison conditions and rights in Portugal for Penal Reform International; 
• mentoring entrepreneurs with small business in Rwanda, Uganda and the Philippines, with Grow Movement.

Her drive and focus are also reflected in the fact that she manages to combine a career in law with high level competition sports, having achieved several national kickboxing titles while at Linklaters.

Carmina holds a bachelor’s in law from NOVA School of Law (2011). 

She then obtained a master’s degree in law and business, from the School of Business and Economics and School of Law of the Portuguese Catholic University, with a thesis on the Portuguese non-performing loans market (2014).

She completed her education with a Post-Graduate Advanced Course in Commercial Litigation at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon (2017) and an Extension Course on Arbitration at the NOVA School of Law (2020).

In 2021, Carmina completed the ESG Accelerator Programme, a partnership between Linklaters and Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. 

Carmina is a Member of the Portuguese Bar Association since 2014 and is also a member of the Portuguese Arbitration Association (APA).

She speaks Portuguese, English and Spanish.