GC Powerlist Argentina Teams

Manufacturing company 3M generates $30bn in annual sales, employs 90,000 people worldwide and produces more than 55,000 products. Operating as the organisation’s local subsidiary, 3M Argentina manufactures pharmaceutical products in accordance with all applicable legal and compliance requirements and the company’s high standards. Making a substantial contribution through a variety of roles and a wide range of legal and corporate areas, the legal team add value to the organisation’s business strategy and high class compliance culture. Led by the highly praised legal, compliance, government affairs manager Tomás Thibaud who ‘takes excellent leadership with the regional team’ that covers Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the legal team has been able to establish a standout compliance function. It has accomplished this by piloting several compliance initiatives in 3M Argentina before they are subsequently implemented in other subsidiaries of 3M around the world. The team has significantly improved the level of communication between departments, working closely with senior management to lead efforts to implement a strategic business plan with the input of the legal and compliance functions. This has resulted in considerable reductions in claims against 3M and demonstrates its positive contribution to the company.

Pharmaceutical multinational Abott’s Argentine legal function is tasked with providing overall legal support and maintaining the company’s regulatory and legislative strategy across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Besides demonstrating unrivalled expertise across corporate governance, business law, contractual work, M&A, antitrust and litigation necessary to service the company’s diverse business units, the team has shown a capacity to tackle regulatory challenges typical of the regional pharma industry. It is led by Javier Davila, an ‘effective team leader’, capable of ‘both operational and long-term strategic thinking’, who according to nominating sources helps ‘members of the team to understand their goals and help organise an action plan to ensure an efficient fulfilment of their objectives’. Prior to taking the helm of the function in June 2017, Davila spent two decades at Unilever Argentina.

The Argentine legal department of pharmaceutical research and development company AbbVie has received a number of plaudits for its diligence and support on a myriad of issues in the healthcare sector. For instance, the team’s leader and regional legal director for the Southern Region Monica Lupi was recognised on The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist: Argentina in 2017 for her outstanding individual legal advice, however her team is also recognised as being one of the best in the market. Particularly praised for its ability to serve the needs of AbbVie’s business activities in what it calls the Southern Region, which encompasses the countries of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, nominators spoke of the team’s flexibility, particularly in terms of ‘reorganising responsibilities in a group task if one member unexpectedly drops out’. Operating within the challenging legal and regulatory environment of the pharmaceutical industry, the team is also said to be prompt and reliable when it comes to managing its considerable workload, performing well even ‘when work is unexpectedly busy or [the team is] short staffed’ and is able to adhere to deadlines no matter what the circumstances.

German sports manufacturer adidas occupies a treasured position in Argentina as kit supplier to the national football team, a significant symbol of the country’s international prestige and appeal. Heading the legal function at adidas Argentina is legal and compliance director Federico Maeso, an experienced counsel with a demonstrated history of working with US and German multinational companies in Argentina. Complementing Maeso’s legal department is the talented tax director for Latin America Joaquin Kersman, who is an in-house lawyer working in the tax department. One nominator said Kersman was ‘involved in a wide variety of legal and tax issues that have given him a broad and deep knowledge of the region’. And, ‘[Kersman] has developed an impressive knowledge that he also shares in the academic field as visiting professor of several universities’. The legal team at adidas Argentina has been recognised for its skill in helping adidas bring new products to market and for assisting on negotiations for a number of sports equipment related contracts.

Aerolíneas Argentinas is the largest airline in Argentina and is also the country’s flag carrier. It has been run by the Argentine government since late 2008, when the country regained control of the airline after it was taken over from Spanish owners, Iberia Airlines and Grupo Marsans. The airline’s legal team is managed by the manager of legal and regulatory affairs, María Laura Elliff, a lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience in business law and an expert on M&A deals, joint ventures and the privatisation of state companies. The team assists all department of the organisation, particularly having an impact in regulatory and financial areas, and brings its expansive skillset in advising on the airline’s numerous commercial projects. Most recently, Alitalia and Aerolíneas Argentinas announced a joint venture which will allow both airlines to coordinate commercial efforts to expand their service offerings, and provide business and leisure travellers with wider and better travel choices. The team assisted on the company entering into a code-share agreement in 2017 and has been behind the company’s recent success in reaching a greater number of destinations, truly enabling the business to make the most of its growth opportunities in the market.

Praised by nominators for the strength of the ‘internal relationships and interaction of the team’ which leads to the ‘efficient execution’ of its tasks, the legal team of agricultural commodities merchandiser Alfred C. Toepfer International Argentina (ACTIAR) comes highly recommended by nominating sources. The team is led by the extremely experienced Patricia Galarza who has over two decades of experience with the company and is also a compliance, tax and audit specialist, taking on these responsibilities with the company in addition to attending to legal matters. Of Galarza and the legal function, a further nominating source stated the following: ‘It possesses an impressive capacity to reconcile the interests of ACTIAR’s operations across different lines of businesses (including the purchase and exportation of agricultural commodities as well as the administration and operation of ports owned by ACTIAR to export its own products and to provide services to other exporters of grains) within the different legal and tax implications of the company’s transactions’.

Aluar is a major aluminium smelting plant, one of the largest in South America and the only one in operation in Argentina. It is thus of immense importance from political, infrastructural and commercial perspectives of the country. As such, its in-house legal team is required to deal with a multitude of competing pressures and challenges as a matter of course. Alberto Eduardo Martínez Costa, the founder of the company’s legal department, is well-regarded for his ethical and highly capable approach to his responsibilities, qualities that he has passed on to his team. Recently, the team has had a major role in the diversification of the company’s portfolio to include wind power plants, of which it opened a major, 200MW installation in mid-2017.

Operating as the local subsidiary of global financial services company American Express International, American Express Argentina is headquartered in Buenos Aires. The company provides various financial products for corporate and personal use including credit cards, charge cards and insurance products. Managed by vice president of legal affairs Ines Zerdan who is recognised as ‘one of the most prominent general counsel in the Argentine financial services industry’ by one nominator, American Express Argentina’s legal team is trained to remain dynamic and competent in the face of challenges. The legal team is well equipped to deal with the changing nature of the financial services market in the wake of economic uncertainty both domestically and globally. Contending with a rapidly expanding business, it has effectively remained abreast of the changing local legal and regulatory environment to ensure the company grows with legal security.

American Tower Corporation’s telecoms infrastructure operations in Argentina are supported expertly by a highly-regarded in-house legal team. Indeed, a nominating source described the team in Argentina as such: ‘The team has developed an impressive capacity to deal with local legal requirements of operations in the industry, as well as the political requirements that affect the industry’. The team as a whole is also led excellently, with director of legal and public affairs Josefina Hernández Gazcón coming in for particular plaudits from nominators: ‘As leader of her team, she has a strong body of experience in complex international M&A transactions and in providing practical corporate and commercial legal advice to her internal clients’.

Since being found in 2005, Avature has developed into a highly flexible enterprise platform for global talent acquisition and talent management, and the leading global provider of customer relationship management for recruiting. It has a presence in over 100 counties and offices in Buenos Aires with a skilled legal team to match its rapidly expanding business. At the helm of the department is vice president of legal affairs Silvina Maeso who has been at the company since 2011. Supporting her in the role is Beatriz Quintana Escudero who acts as senior legal counsel, privacy officer and corporate secretary. They have worked on the negotiation of Software as a Service (SaaS) contracts around the globe, working on contracts and negotiations of contracts with providers, to Fortune 500 companies. Senior legal counsel Nicola Souter was recruited to the Argentina legal team in 2017 to reflect the company’s recent growth in country.

US multinational consumer products seller Avon has an established presence in Latin America and utilises an innovative four-person legal team based in Buenos Aires to cover Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay. Legal director for south markets Guillermo Grela heads the team and explains its setup: ‘Legal manager Juan Bun’s main area of focus is commercial and corporate law, while for legal junior manager María del Carmen Imerone it is labour law and legal operations. Manuela Mizraje (legal analyst) is a recently graduated lawyer who provides assistance to both [Bun] and [Imerone]’. Together the team has contributed to the success of a number of company achievements in the last three years such as the closure of business in Bolivia, the outsourcing of the picking and shipping function in Chile, the automatisation of the picking line in Argentina and the launch of a new business model pilot in Buenos Aires. The legal team has also exemplified a strong integrations with the company by ‘[reshaping] the business’ perception of the legal function by showing a real service attitude towards the business and its goals’, according to Grela. To this end the team has run an internal client satisfaction survey and launched an intranet website, an initiative with the goal of strengthening the department’s ‘bond with the business by showing the team legal information in a very appealing way while conveying legal information relevant for the business’. Additionally the team has implemented a bespoke IT solution for contract management in the markets it serves and engaged a legal process outsourcing firm to get cost-effective advice for mid to low-complexity contracts. Summing up the result of the legal team’s efforts, Grela had this to say: ‘The team has changed the business mind set about legal, by showing the legal function as a partner, which contributes to anticipating problems by being proactive and participating in different projects from the very beginning’.

With its history dating as far back as 1878, Banco Ciudad has a long and established history in Argentina as a bank with a strong ethical outlook. Comprised of a number of gifted legal professionals, the bank’s legal team has proven itself to be dedicated in helping the company achieve its goals. Amongst its ranks is head of legal audit Gabriela De Divitiis, a lawyer with strong experience in legal negotiations at banking entities, as well as in risk analysis and due diligence processes for M&A deals. Silvia Serjhan is also an important figure having worked at the company since 2006; she provides advice on a number of matters including to the board of directors in both judicial and administrative actions.

As Argentina’s largest cooperatively-owned bank, Banco Credicoop has a legal function comprised of some of the country’s best legal talent. Amongst its longest-serving members are Vanesa Paula Sulam who joined in 1998 and senior legal adviser Gisela Elizalde who joined a year later and today provides corporate legal advice in general, financial and banking contracts as well as legal and technical advice in foreign trade and customs law. A further key member of the team is senior lawyer Javier Condado who has been giving sound advice to the non-profit institution since 2007. The team is credited as having a positive input on various matters ranging from opening new branches to lobbying against proposed tax reforms.

A constituent of the MERVAL Index as well as being listed in Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies, Banco Galicia is one of the premier financial institutions in the Argentine economy and encounters a number of legal hurdles to navigate in its several lines of banking and financial products. Steering the company through these obstacles in a business-friendly and commercially-minded way is a legal team led by the Bank’s most senior lawyer and general counsel Gonzalo Braceras, an inclusion in the GC Powerlist: Argentina 2017. He describes his team of 30 including 24 lawyers as professionals that ‘contribute to the company’s achievement of its goals while, at the same time, framing its initiatives to current laws and regulations’, and is organised in a structure that is composed of different sub-teams that deal with specific legal areas led by ‘leading counsel’ all directly reporting to Braceras. Despite the specialist advice the team dispenses, it has a comprehensive remit including wholesale banking and retail matters as well as commercial and labour cases. In addition, the team also ‘performs the secretary and the back office roles’. Speaking to the changes made to the department during this time, Braceras notes a re-design of internal processes that have reflected a shift in focus. To this end the team is now changing towards a model of ‘first hand advice to the branch network as opposed to the old model, by which all lawyers would take care of that task. The same group would also address all consumer claims (except those connected to litigation) building a robust scorecard with data from our performance’. This innovative and wide-ranging perspective has been central to the team’s success and has lent itself to a number of recent accomplishments. These include ‘reducing the potential impact to the balance sheet of the bank, and helping in the organisational restructure of Grupo Financiero Galicia and its subsidiaries.’

Banco Macro’s in-house legal team is packed with top-class legal talent, with multiple high-level in-house counsel with commercial experience, specialist legal advice and many years’ tenure with the company, ensuring they are entirely au fait with the company and its internal operations. Legal manager María José Van Morlegan has been with the company since 2012, whilst legal and recovery specialist Mariano Tersse, head of business banking legal Fernando Martín Forni and head of legal consulting Sebastian Candia also have decades of experience between them and together provide comprehensive coverage of the many challenges which the company has to mitigate against. Manager of legal advice Ernesto Marcelo Lenga and regional legal coordinator Yesica V. Forte’s long tenures also speak volumes to the company’s staff retention and development efforts; the latter began working as a legal intern in 2008 before progressing through the ranks over the years. Leveraging the attractive development opportunities and cohesive spirit within the team – as well as the company’s highly prestigious status in the Argentine economy as one of its largest banks – allows Banco Macro to amass multiple team members who know the company inside out and can provide intricately tailored legal advice on all manner of topics as a matter of course. This gives the company a major strategic edge when competing in the notoriously intensive banking market.

The oldest banking institution in Argentina and currently one of the largest with total assets of US$12bn and market capitalisation of US$3.4bn as of May 2017, BBVA Francés is one the country’s most prominent financial institutions. The company’s in-house legal team is blessed with a deep technical knowledge of the company’s operations and the legal principles which underpin these. It is also highly experienced. Long-standing legal director Adrian Bressani – who is also secretary of the board of the company – is one example of this, as is commercial division lawyer Daniela Ruffet who has over a decade of experience with BBVA Francés in total.

Since its inception in 1913, the Argentine retailer BGH has experienced sustained growth, and currently occupies a privileged position among regional competitors. The legal team at the epicentre of the company currently deals with all legal and compliance issues encountered across six distinct divisions: industrial, wireless, technology, cellular, central air conditioning, and home. Working in close collaboration with external lawyers and local in-house counsel based abroad, the team provides legal advice across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and Rwanda, and promptly deals with M&A deals and due diligence proceedings.

Pioneering biotechnology company Biogen’s cutting-edge remedies for neurological and neurodegenerative conditions in the Southern Cone are managed from its regional base in Argentina, which has been in operation since 2008. The company’s legal capabilities have been expanded recently, with legal and compliance associate director Bartolome Cordero joining in November 2017 and legal and compliance advisor Esteban Ruete joining in January of the same year. These outstanding lawyers, both with experience of managing departments (Cordero was previously head legal, compliance and business development and licensing at Sandoz Argentina while Ruete was country manager for BARBUSS legal services), provide the company with significant in-house firepower with which to tackle the complex groundwork needed to research, establish and support company’s products. Given the highly regulated and highly scrutinised sector it operates in, the Biogen legal function covering Argentina, Chile and Uruguay deserves very high plaudits for its work.

An Argentine business operating in the biotechnology industry, Biosidus has activities that span the research and development of high quality biopharmaceuticals in the territories of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Owing to this technologically advanced business remit, internal legal support to the company must be of a high standard and adept at facing the intricate and cutting-edge facets of the law. The Biosidus in-house team is comprised of several legal and regulatory affairs specialists that assist the business across a variety of its research projects and agreements. Known for its efficiency and expertise in a complex environment, the Biosidus legal team is constantly faced with a raft of new products that require appropriate documents and contracts, license agreements and other agreements related to product supply. In protecting the company’s research findings as well as its market share, the legal team is also tasked with affairs related to intellectual property, most notably trademarks, patents and technology transfer.

Bridas Corporation is an independent oil and gas holding company based in Argentina, having been founded in 1948 it has since become the second largest producer of fossil fuels in the country. With a major focus on the South American Southern Cone and Central Asia regions, its activities include the exploration, development and production of oil and gas reserves, as well as marketing and transportation of these products. Bridas Corporation’s legal team has been a core component in its expansion, particularly in the Central Asian region having been involved all negotiations and large scale contracts to secure the business’ commercial interests. The team achieves this by operating with optimum knowledge in explorations rights both domestically and across a number of international jurisdictions. Amongst these is a joint venture agreement established in 2017, in which oil major BP agreed to merge its interests in Bridas Corporation, creating the largest privately owned integrated energy company in Argentina. Amongst its most recognised individuals, legal counsel Juan Bautista Yofre stands out for his participation in the sale and purchase of assets in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, including the acquisition of Esso from ExxonMobil. The team assisted in the due diligence of the takeover, using its knowledge on contractual matters, litigation, antitrust, IP, national and local regulations surrounding the oil industry.

Bunge’s history in Argentina dates as far back as 1884 when it launched a grain trading company in the expanding agribusiness market. Today it is one of the most important agribusiness companies within the region, with large operations across Latin America. Its legal team covering the Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay is headed by regional chief legal and insurance officer and director of governmental affairs Jose Castelli. His influence and reputation as an expert in structuring M&As is proving to have a positive effect on the legal team. In 2017, the legal function played a key role on Bunge Southern Cone’s acquisition of edible oil company Aceitera Martínez. In adding to the organisation’s position in the agricultural food chain and its commitment to national production, the deal demonstrates the team’s ability to contribute effectively to business expansion. As one nominator said of the team, ‘the group applies problem-solving strategies across a range of areas [and] adapts resources to cope with contingencies’.

Cablevisión is one of Latin America’s largest cable television operators and one of the region’s main telecommunications companies, operating pay-tv, internet and telephone services across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. With a customer base of approximately three million people and the fast moving nature of the industry, legal support to the company is required to be comprehensive, flexible and dynamic. The company’s legal affairs are handled thematically, with operations and human resources led by Maria Torrens and criminal matters and piracy led by Sergio Piris. Nominators praised the entire legal team as a standout in the Latin American media sector, particularly the team’s management of relationships with broadcast and regulatory bodies, in addition to assisting in intellectual property and privacy matters.

Within their Argentina operations, Cargill’s in-house legal team is a very well embedded function with a track record of success and immense experience within the team. This is exemplified by Southern Cone legal director Cynthia Zarranz, who has been with the company since 1993 and knows the business’s unique requirements (it is the world’s largest privately-owned company) inside-out. She leads a multi-disciplinary and multinational team which is well-stocked with legal talent. Laura Andrea Pesce also possesses an enviable level of experience to draw from, having operated with the company since August 2006, during which time she has built a reputation as a formidable and highly efficient litigation manager. In-house corporate lawyer Maria Cecilia Bameule also has over a decade experience with the company during which she has advised on the full spectrum of company activities, while Sebastian Lopez Yanes is a specialist labour and employment senior lawyer whose specific expertise allows the company a robust response to HR and employment matters. The team’s comprehensive mix of both generalist and specialist legal understanding, combined with the intense understanding of the companies intricacies that comes with the vast internal experience it can draw from, mean that Cargill’s Argentina-based Southern Cone legal team is fully able to meet the myriad challenges of the company. Highlighting the strength of the team as a whole, senior Lawyer - financial lawyer and M&A specialist Matias Sicardi, senior lawyer - shipping and trading specialist Marina Alvarez and general commercial lawyers Lucas Berrade, Cecilia Hoszowski, Lia Pawlow and Sol Blanco were all recommended during the research process.

Chilean based retailer Cencosud is the third largest listed retail company in Latin America with more than 1,000 stores across the region. It is a multi-format retail with presence in five countries with more than 140,000 employees across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and a commercial office in China. Its Argentinian legal team is led by corporate manager of legal affairs, Carlos Alberto Mechetti, with over 23 years of experience at the company, he has led the team through some of the organisations most monumental transactions and deals. Most recently the team has contributed to Cencosud improving its operating profit by approximately 60% and moving forward with a real estate megaproject in Argentina. The organisation’s future looks very promising as it is expecting to reach revenues of US$16.5m during 2018. The team has accelerated this growth by strengthening its profitability plan and competitiveness proposal, supporting its innovation and improvements in logistics and technological capabilities. It has also provided advice on the omni-channel developments that will form an important part of Cencosud’s future business strategy.

Central Puerto’s ‘reliable, competent and technically skilled’ legal team drew praise from nominators for its ability to seamlessly facilitate investments undertaken by the business in the national and international energy markets. The company has experienced exponential growth in the past few years, and currently boasts an installed capacity of nearly 4,000MW, which represents 12% of one of Argentina’s two energy systems SADI (Sistema Argentino de Interconexión, Argentine Interconnected System), and 17% of the installed capacity of private generators. Overseen by Jose Manuel Pazos, the legal department has been a fundamental part of this process thanks to its flawless execution of corporate transactions and delivery of excellence and efficiency on an operational level. Having facilitated Central Puerto’s recent merger activity, the team is currently involved in supporting the company’s upcoming United States IPO, which could see it sell in excess of $100m to the public.

Since the 1980s, multinational energy corporation Chevron has been producing crude oil and natural gas in Argentina through its wholly owned subsidiary Chevron Argentina, and today is amongst the top ten largest energy producers in the country. Heading the in-house legal function of this domestic branch is legal manager Fabiana Fonseca who initially joined in 2004, before being promoted to her current position 10 years later. With approximately 14 years of experience at the company, Chevron can place great trust in her abilities in leading the local function. One in-house lawyer supporting Fonseca in the legal team and highlighted in this year’s research is Mariana Caticha, who has been with the organisation since 2010. In 2018, the legal team assisted Chevron Argentina on its partnership agreement with Argentina’s state-owned oil company YPF, as a response to a forecasted boom in Argentine shale gas market.

The legal team at the property and causality insurer Chubb Argentina is comprised of three employees who report into the CEO and general counsel of the company in Latin America. Headed by experienced corporate counsel Ignacio Salguero, the team deals with a plethora of issues to protect the insurer’s business in Argentina ranging from negotiating and preparing various commercial agreements to providing internal and external legal advice on corporate transactions and supervising complex corporate litigations. The team received particular praise for its contribution to Chubb’s 2015 acquisition by ACE (the largest insurance M&A deal in history) by coordinating the transaction locally. Characterised by a ‘can-do attitude‘ to work, the team is focused on solving problems in the fastest and most proactive way possible. ‘We are proud of developing a problem- solving approach culture in our team’, Salguero says.

The March 2017 sale of Citi’s consumer business in Argentina had a big impact on the company’s legal team in the country. Explaining the effect of the function’s reduction in size from 13 members to six lawyers, country general counsel for Citibank Argentina Nicolás Pertiné says, ‘Because it is a small team now, all five lawyers report directly to me. It did not make sense to structure different lines of report in such a small team. Out of the five people that report to me, four are fully dedicated to providing legal advice to the corporate business (institutional clients group), two of them are seniors and two other semi-seniors’. He also names senior legal counsel Carlos Vassallo and Alejandra Attar Cohen as providing legal advice to the corporate business and being key individuals within the team, since they support businesses with high profile transactions and business leaders. Pertiné had the following to say on the challenges that the sale of Citi’s consumer business posed: ‘It was a big transaction. Approximately 2,000 employees were transferred to the buyer, 70 branches around the country, clients, assets, liabilities, etc. Since Citi Argentina is registered as a branch of a foreign entity, it did not involve a transfer of shares. Consequently, we had to “separate” the business that was being sold to be able to transfer it to the buyer. The transaction lasted a bit more than a year, and required analysis of many different and complex legal aspects. However, the most challenging feature was the management of people throughout the process. Many employees that were being transferred had to work on the M&A transaction, and all of the people impacted by the sale had to keep doing their work to maintain the business -and its value- until closing. Leading teams in such a context was challenging, but people showed their professionalism and commitment to Citi until the very last minute of the deal’. A further achievement of the Citi legal team in Argentina was its work on the transaction entered into with the Central Bank of Argentina in 2016, an important and sophisticated transaction in which Citi participated with an important ticket of US$500m. Espousing the virtues of all talented legal teams, Pertiné says, ‘internal legal departments can add great value to the business. Their knowledge of the company and the business that it performs, as well as its needs and risks, put legal teams in a privileged situation to provide qualified legal services that the company appreciates, values and demands’.

Clorox is an American multinational consumer and professional products business whose activities in Argentina comprise of offering product brands that improve, facilitate and make people’s lives more healthy. Coming in for particular praise from nominating sources is Carolina Rachela, who is Clorox’s international senior corporate counsel and leads a legal department that deals with a number of different legal and compliance issues spanning the consumer products sector. Stating that Rachela ‘leads and coordinates a team that handles many brand registrations from Argentina to the world’, nominators were impressed with the team’s ability to deal with issues stemming from the protection of Clorox’s range of cleaning products which include leading brands in the Argentine market, namely, Ayudín, Poett, Trenet, Mortimer, Pinoluz, Arco Iris, Liquid Plumber and Selton.

Coca-Cola FEMSA was set up in Argentina in October 1991, with Coca-Cola FEMSA de Buenos Aires being acquired by the company later in 1997. Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest franchise bottler of Coca-Cola products in the world and one of the leading brewers in the international beer industry. Reflecting this dynamic profile, the company’s Argentine legal team take on the wide-ranging responsibility of advising on all legal matters and external affairs of the organisation. Led by head of legal and corporate affairs, Federico Verdier, the team assist on disputes, bank and intercompany loans, M&As, commercial contracts and overseeing negotiations with suppliers and customers. Amongst some of its leading personnel is legal and corporate relationships director Germán Guillermo Pennimpede who brings his experience attained in previously held positions with a number of leading Latin American law firms. Responsible for external affairs, the team also work on maintaining relations with public and regulatory bodies, overseeing environmental affairs and coordinating Coca-Cola FEMSA Argentina’s corporate and social responsibility initiatives.

Colgate-Palmolive, the US worldwide consumer products company focused on the production and distribution of household, healthcare and personal care products operates in Argentina through its subsidiary Colgate-Palmolive Argentina. Supporting the Southern Cone arm of the organisation is a three person legal team headed by legal director Gabriela Álvarez de la Fuente. Joining the company in 2016 after almost 13 years of experience in senior in-house roles at other large multinational companies operating Argentina, Álvarez de la Fuente has been noticed by peers for her excellent managerial skills and strong commercial approach, building up a stalwart team that is able to handle complex deals and navigate the wide geographical remit covered by the consumer goods company. Álvarez de la Fuente, however, is keen to highlight the contribution of Colgate-Palmolive Argentina’s former legal manager Alicia Vallespir who retired in early 2018 after 20 years with the company. The team’s daily activities include assisting with understanding the business, successfully finding useful solutions and preventing legal risks in Latin America’s Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile. The team is credited for being well equipped to deal with regulatory issues, contract negotiations, and projects implementations within these countries.

Founded in 1936, Argentine agricultural company Cresud has a long established presence in the country with a significant farmland portfolio. With a developing business abroad, the company’s legal team is tasked with guiding Cresud’s expansion in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. In its legal team, legal manager Maximiliano Venditti Castro has played a key role since joining in March 2010. Together their work on Cresud’s US$515m acquisition and consolidation of IDBD Corp, one of the largest holding companies in Israel, gained industry recognition. And with Cresud being the only company in its industry to be listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, the legal team is also credited for having a multidisciplinary skillset capable of meeting unique demands.

"Argentine company Despegar.com is Latin America’s leading online travel agency and its legal team is currently led by the vastly experienced vice president, general counsel and corporate affairs director Juan Pablo Alvarado. Within his team is regional legal director Francisco Beláustegui, whose ‘team is very well-led’ and has ‘wide experience across industries’, according to nominating sources from the private practice sector. The department works on a number of concurrently-running multijurisdictional projects relating to the company’s plans to expand its destination locations and commercial deals. Most notably, members of the legal team at Despegar.com have been credited for working on the company’s 2017 listing on the New York Stock Exchange which raised US$332m. "

American company DowDuPont is the world’s largest chemical company and was formed after the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont in August 2017. With both companies enjoying a long and established presence in Argentina, the newly formed organisation is one of the largest and most respected conglomerates in the country. Part of its strong Argentine workforce, the company’s in-house legal team support DowDuPont in its mission to generate productive inputs for 18 industrial sectors including food, hygiene and personal care, household appliances, construction and packaging among others. Its leader has been coordinating a solid legal team for many years and is now successfully facing the challenge of implimenting the merger of the two giant companies. Counsel Alejandra Besora in particular is noticed by peers for her ability to put together a competent team and as one nominator says, ‘she knows the industry very well and the players at stake’. Thanks to her ‘clear communication and set goals and expectations’ the team has grown to be a reliable and skilled function that consistently provide exceptional advice to the organisation.

Founded in 1992, Edenor is Argentina’s largest electricity distributor in terms of customer numbers and electricity sales figures. The company’s in-house legal team is comprised of a number of talented lawyers and is headed by legal affairs manager Carlos Ariosa, who joined Edenor in 2012, and has been part of the organisation’s major recent projects and achievements. Such accomplishments include participating on Edenor’s 2016 agreement with Philips to encourage the use of LED technology in lighting systems, the inauguration of a substation in Gaona in December 2017, and supporting Edenor in its approximately US$1.28bn investment plan that will take place between 2017 and 2021. Some key members of the legal department include the long-serving Ignacio Taccone, senior lawyers Belén Arnaude and María Agustina Rodriguez Flores, as well as Patricio Cosentino who is in charge of the portfolio of trials in civil and commercial courts.

One of Argentina’s leading financial services companies, Efectivo Sí is notable for its financial assistance to customers for the purchase of motor vehicles, utilities, trucks and agricultural machinery. The legal support of these arrangements is complex, and the company’s legal function relies on ‘effective collaboration and a deep knowledge of technical skills’ to achieve this, as described by a nominating source. Legal affairs coordinator Martin Caldas came in for particular praise from a private practice source, particularly for his work in the area of corporate regulatory advice.

State-owned firm ENARSA Argentina is engaged in the exploitation, production, industrialisation, transport and trade of petroleum, natural gas and electricity. The company’s legal team is led by legal manager Julia Langus, an expert in corporate law with particular focus on the legal aspects of electric power, oil and gas. The team’s role entails the preparation and review of commercial contracts, supply agreements and aspects surrounding the transportation and distribution of natural gas and electric power. The department has strengthened the organisation’s business strategy, in which the concepts of “well-being, development and energy” are three fundamental and intimately related components. The team has proven to be a driving force in the organisations search for new energy sources, facilitating an innovative attitude and alliance with scientists and researchers for the design of a clean and environmentally friendly future are at the centre of its business policy. The team has proven its cross-jurisdictional talent, having been instrumental in its support of regulated activities carried out or associated with third parties both in Argentina and in foreign countries.

The day-to-day life of an in-house counsel at sports broadcasting giant is a hectic one, with securing broadcast rights, combating piracy efforts and securing ad-based revenue all taking on high priority for the team and providing unique challenges. The organisation continues to add high value sporting rights to its repertoire from rivals, as part of a highly competitive and continuous effort to prolong its market-leading status. As an example of this, ESPN Latin America announced in February 2018 that it has secured exclusive rights to broadcast ATP World Tour 500 tennis series across Latin America and the Caribbean. Principal counsel for Spanish-speaking Latin America Federico Vibes is a copyright, trademark and entertainment law specialist, making him the ideal person to head up ESPN’s legal response to these business-critical issues; he has been with the company since 2013 and been at the forefront of a number of successful projects during this time. Alongside him, Paz Villamil and Agustina Lanardonne – senior attorney and legal counsel respectively – were also mentioned by sources as having utilised a highly proactive and efficient approach that has had a major appreciable impact on the team’s successes.

In Argentina, Genneia is a leading supplier of energy solutions using the latest technologies for thermal equipment and a main investor in the country’s renewable energy projects. Legal affairs director Diego Abelleyra heads the expanding legal team; he recruited senior associates Juan Manuel Pueyrredon and Rocío Aluminé Díaz in the last 12 months as a reflection of the business’ expansion. Both legal professionals have at least ten years of private practice experience and are specialists in international and contract law respectively. The team’s work on multiple projects in 2017 has gained them recognition amongst peers in the industry. The team was involved in executing Genneia’s 20-year contract for the provision of renewable energy to leading Argentine manufacturer Loma Negra, in addition to two other renewable electricity supply contracts with Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico (CAMMESA) and the acquisition of Generadora Eléctrica de Tucumán SA (GETSA) from Pluspetrol.

The legal support for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s extensive portfolio of pharmaceutical product is complex, with expert management needed at all stages of the product lifecycle, from initial research and development to rollout and licensing. The staff of the GSK in-house legal team combine their pharmaceutical legal abilities with comprehensive knowledge of the company’s products and a conscientious attitude towards compliance and ethics. As such, in addition to legal team leader Diego Alvarez García (who also has responsibility for Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia in his role as legal director for Argentina and Southern Cone), GSK also employs the services of dedicated ethics and compliance coordinator for Argentina and the Southern Cone Mayra Frumento, who formerly worked as an external lawyer for GSK. Recently, the considerable powers of the team were deployed to assist the licensing of Bexsero, a remedy to meningococcal infections which can cause meningitis; the drug is now available across Argentina.

Software development services company GlobalLogic is extremely well-equipped with legal ability in Argentina, counting on a highly capable in-house legal team that is as impressive individually as it is collectively. Leading the team is head of legal for Latin America Ana Laura Absi, who also takes on an international role as global counsel for ethics and compliance. She has also overseen a steady expansion of the team since taking on her current role in 2014. Since then, it has added legal analyst Alan Leibovich, corporate legal counsel Pablo Adrián Repond and senior legal specialist Tatiana Bobbio to its ranks, enabling it to take on a much expanded workload in support of the company’s objectives.

Globant employs a highly capable group of talented, knowledgeable and experienced lawyers, who possess unrivalled understanding of IT sector law in Argentina. Established in 2003, the Buenos Aires headquartered software development company provides services to clients across Latin America, United States and United Kingdom, which requires around-the clock, cross border legal support of the highest quality. Fortunately, the team led by Patricio Pablo Rojo rises to the challenge consistently, showcasing an ability to tackle the most sophisticated legal issues in a timely fashion. Prior to assuming control of Globant’s legal department in 2013 Rojo amassed approximately 17 years in private practice, working for law firms Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett and Baker & McKenzie, and professional services firm PwC. Apart from its highly experienced leader, this team features a number of up-and-coming rising stars, such as legal and corporate affairs manager Sol Noello, and legal and corporate affairs analysts Floriana Libertini, Camila Barbosa Yañez and Elida Cilli.

Led by legal affairs manager Federico Gottlieb, the Grupo Arcor legal team is renowned for its expert support of the many business objectives of one of Argentina’s most valuable companies. The global confectionary producer’s legal team is stacked with world-class talent, in particular head of legal affairs César Codebó – who is especially well-known for his expertise in the areas of competition, consumer protection and exchange law as well as his company compliance efforts – and legal manager María Teresita Carvallo, who advises the board on matters including environmental and administrative concerns as well as to legal issues. In addition to being extremely versatile, the team is fortunate to have vast reserves of experience to draw from which supplements the immense talent within the department. An example of this is deputy legal manager in charge of intellectual property Laura Sansalvador who has been with the company since the year 2000.

With an over 100 year history and a workforce of approximately 2,800 employees, Grupo Peñaflor is the top producer of wine in Argentina and one of the top ten wine producers in the world. Dealing with a plethora of legal challenges arising along the group’s diverse operations, the company’s legal team – led by one of Argentina’s leading consumer sector counsel Sebastián Baglietto – is involved in everything from product regulation to international distribution agreements, brand and marketing issues to liaising with state and industry bodies. Under Baglietto’s 19-year tenure at the company, the legal team has recorded a great number of impressive transactional victories, culminating in a landmark 2015 deal to buy Diageo’s wine interests in Argentina. On this transaction Baglietto’s team impressed with their handling of complexities of negotiating cross-border M&A and licensing agreements, as well as their general knowledge of the regional markets.

Grupo Supervielle is a leading financial services holding company with operations spanning retail banking, corporate banking, insurance, treasury, consumer finance and asset management. Well-integrated with various business divisions across the group’s diverse subsidiaries, its legal team is instrumental to everything that Grupo Supervielle does, providing prudent legal assistance and flawless preparation, analysis and negotiation of contracts on behalf of each division. The team is led by director of legal affairs and compliance Sergio Gabriel Gabai, a lawyer with more than two decades of experience as an in-house counsel in the financial services sector. Prior to taking the helm of the department in 2007, Gabai served across leading financial institutions in the region, such as BBVA Banco Frances- Credilogros, BBVA Banco Frances, BankBoston, Deutsch Bank and Banco Comercial de Tandil. The legal team is organized in four units, managed by four professionals who rely on wide experience in the financial industry to address corporate affairs, lawsuits, contracts and counseling, and Supervielle´s anti money laundering programs.

Holcim is a pioneer company in the construction industry in Argentina, it produces and markets cement, concrete and stone aggregates. Its first Argentine cement manufacturing plant was built in 1930 in the province of Córdoba and ever since then it has participated in the development of the country. Supporting its application of advanced technological processes for Latin America, its legal team is made up of two senior lawyers, one junior lawyer, one administrative assistant and one trainee, all reporting to the general counsel, Santiago Ojea Quintana, a brilliant lawyer with strong skills in corporate law, contract negotiation and compliance matters. ‘Each lawyer complies with a business-partner role together with a plant and area of expertise’ says Ojea. The team’s senior in-house counsels Pablo Purro and Emiliana Bolontrade stand out for their contribution in the establishment and positive perception of the legal department. The team has become a solid part of the executive decision making process, forming the strategic direction of the company, with the ‘goal to act as independent business partner providing on-time, creative and risk-appropriate business solutions’.

The HP legal team in Argentina is renowned for its cohesion and innovation in addition to its legal ability. Indeed, it was described by nominators as ‘a very integrated team, which interacts very well and finds new paths to the development of the profession’, highlighting that its development as a department which is pushing the boundaries of in-house legal work. Singled out for particular praise by nominating sources is Maria Florencia Artucovich. As part of her role as country counsel, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, Artucovich takes on a cross-border set of responsibilities requiring varied expertise and a knowledge of customs, cultures, regulatory and legal norms in a number of jurisdictions.

HSBC is the seventh largest bank in Argentina, it provides a full range of banking and financial products and services including consumer finance, insurance, investment and corporate banking to over 1.2 million customers. Strengthening HSBC’s various operations in Argentina is the local legal team, comprised of twenty five lawyers and seven administrative and risk management staff in the country. The team is led by the talented general counsel Pedro Frade who leads the legal function not only in HSBC Group for Argentina but also at HSBC Brazil – Investment Bank. As a lawyer qualified in Brazil with international experience in the UK, Frade counts on a wide range of Argentine senior lawyers as his colleagues. Martin Vazquez is a highly recognized banking lawyer who actively participates in every relevant discussion with the industry and Julieta Arribas who has become an advocate of female leadership, devolving, besides her transactional profile, expertise in areas that are very relevant to the bank, such as financial crime compliance and data privacy. Both have worked in top law firms in Bueno Aires prior to joining HSBC and spent time in New York at magic circle firms acquiring international experience. In line with the global HSBC diversity agenda, Frade was the only Latin American leader listed in the Top 100 LGBT Outstanding Leaders list published by the Financial Times in October 2017. ‘Diversity is a hot topic to us’, states Frade, and it is to this end that they have worked hard to build a diverse and inclusive team who is also dedicated to pro bono work and volunteering, using their internal platform to influence employees to fight for a diverse and inclusive community. On the most important changes to the team in recent years, Frade says, ‘After the significant shift of Argentina by the end of 2015 and the extensive package of statutory reforms, our main challenge has been to adapt the profile of the team to be on top of the new legal regulatory framework (enabling more sophisticated financial solutions and products), providing sound and forward-looking advice’. The team has also been tasked with providing visibility of the local legislative agenda to HSBC Group, globally, and how legal risk is being managed with a clear mandate to lawyers of playing a dual role, that is being partners of the business whilst also guardians of the franchise. This has been an area of success for the team with nominators appreciating that ‘[Frade] and his team handle a very difficult regulated scenario’. Finding opportunities to leverage from the group legal’s expertise, looking for efficiencies to manage the legal expenditure and prioritising strategic issues have been top issues of the teams’ agenda. ‘We have been influenced by the conduct agenda that requires that lawyers go beyond of [their legal role], and also consider what is right: delivering fair outcomes to clients and correspond to what society and regulators expect from us’, says Frade. Among the many notable projects the team has worked on, in 2017 HSBC was positioned as a number one bank in the public sector and local currency issuances, executing landmark transactions such as the US$2.75bn century bond for the Republic of Argentina, being the first 100 year bond in the Argentine market.

Technology and computing giant IBM’s legal function in Argentina is a very important one for the global conglomerate in Latin America and further afield, with legal director for South Spanish America and Caribbean countries Daniela Amallo being based in the country. She is an individual with almost unparalleled local and global knowledge of IBM and its legal setup, having spent over two decades with it since joining as a legal counsel in 1997, and being responsible for the successful conclusion of a vast number of important projects during this time. She is joined by many other capable lawyers in the country, however. Legal counsel Alina Black and Analia Agallano are both HR and litigation legal specialists with multiple years’ tenure with the company. Together, the legal function at IBM in Argentina is able to provide commercially-minded legal advice tailored to meet the specific needs of the forward-thinking and technologically cutting-edge buiness.

An Argentine construction engineering company founded over 100 years ago, IMPSA has a number of different business interests in its home country and abroad, including renewable energy solutions that are organised into three separate business units: IMPSA Hydro, IMPSA Wind and IMPSA Energy. Internal legal support to IMPSA’s group of companies is of an extremely high standard and covers both local and regional legal issues for the organisation. The legal team, which is led by legal director Hernán Iglesias, is comprised of talented and dedicated legal and compliance specialists who serve the business’ needs amidst the background of a complex legal and regulatory environment. Iglesias, who was featured in the GC Powerlist: Argentina 2017, is particularly highlighted for his practical and business-savvy approach to legal practice. A legal function spoken of by nominators as being ‘very focused, knowledgeable [and] to the point’, he has ‘gone through the political and economic changes of the country and the region during the last 15 to 20 years, which has given him a solid experience in the field of law, and a practical and pragmatic approach to the practice’.

AB InBev’s legal team has been almost entirely reorganised in the last two years. After recruiting Latin America South (LAS) legal director Nicolás Noro Villagra in July 2016, the multinational drinks company has gone on to hire four more lawyers in Argentina and two lawyers in other LAS countries. Today, the department covering Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay is comprised of 14 lawyers, two paralegals and one law student intern, with none of those lawyers and the intern being based in Argentina. Noro explains the roles of key members in the team: ‘Marcelo Gattei, our litigation manager, has been with the company for over 30 years. He oversees and manages a wide variety of litigation cases, including product liability, taxes, criminal, labour and commercial cases. Tomás Hermida Zapiola, our legal manager, oversees all corporate and commercial aspects, including marketing, sales, corporate maintenance, finance. He usually is the lead counsel in key negotiations, including our joint venture with Nestlé and our bottling relationship with PepsiCo. Francisco Ramos, our compliance manager, oversees our compliance program and compliance investigations. Santiago Marques, is the legal manager for ZX Ventures. He is responsible for providing support to our disruptive growth team’. Noro Villagra also highlighted senior attorneys Antonella Amoroso, Ainhoa Ferretti and Yanina Capano as important team figures. Together the LAS legal function has worked on a prolific set of key transactions, matters and cases that have a significant business impact in the last two years. These include a filing before the antitrust agency on the global acquisition of SAB Miller, implementing a strong compliance program, advising the latest tax reform in Argentina and coordinating AB InBev´s renewable energy project in Argentina, as part of fulfilling the company’s worldwide goal of using only renewable energies by 2025. It is also credited for managing one of the largest brands portfolios in Argentina and a brand swap agreement with Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas (CCU) valued at over US$300m. In fact, its negotiations with external parties mark the LAS legal team out as one of the region’s top legal departments. It was heavily involved in the negotiation of several marketing and sponsorship agreements, including the sponsorship of the national football league and its two biggest football clubs, Boca Juniors and River Plate. The team also negotiated and renewed a joint venture with Nestlé (Eco de los Andres) for the production, distribution and sale of water products, including Glaciar and Eco de los Andres spring water, and also negotiated an agreement with Red Bull for the exclusive distribution of Red Bull in Argentina. With such a long recent history in tangibly contributing to the business, Noro Villagra can highly praise the team’s abilities: ‘As the legal director I can’t be prouder of the team that we have, having achieved many things in a short period of time. Even though most of the team has been with the company less than two years, we were able to position the legal team as a business partner and trusted advisor. That is an incredible achievement in a fast-paced consumer company’.

Inversiones y Representaciones (IRSA) is Argentina’s largest real estate developer, and the only company in its class that trades on the Buenos Aires Stock Market. It relies on a top-quality in-house legal function to safeguard its activities and enable its business goals, with its legal team providing sound commercial advice as well as technical legal expertise. Gaston Lernoud, corporate legal head, has been with the company since 2002 and highlights the level of experience available to the company. Similarly, legal analyst Juan Pablo Laganá has been with the company since 2009, and provides quality legal support for the company’s objectives.

Kimberly-Clark’s seven-person legal function is described by nominating sources as having ‘strong corporate and compliance expertise’, as well as being ‘business-oriented and permanently supporting the business goals of the company’. As well as this, function leader and regional director for legal, compliance and public affairs for the Austral Region Fernando Hofmann came in for particular praise, as nominators stated that he ‘has significant contractual and negotiation skills, is a great leader and has the ability to manage and coordinate an extensive regional group of people’. Hofmann himself places ‘advertising challenges and e-commerce’ among the team’s most salient concerns lately, as it looks to take the already well-known brand to the next level in the region. He lists the company’s day-to-day responsibilities as being ‘to support the business in compliance activities and programs, plus litigation and taxes’. Highly confident in the team’s abilities, he sums up its ethos as such: ‘Focus on delivery, and never say never’.

One of the world’s largest and most successful food and beverages company, US conglomerate Kraft Heinz has a continually expanding presence in Latin America. Despite being based in Costa Rica, nominators have been highly impressed by the work of the in-house legal team covering Kraft Heinz’s operations in the Southern Cone countries. As one nominator explained, ‘Gloriana Picado is the senior lawyer in charge of Latin America operations. The team is based in Costa Rica and covers the whole South Cone region, excluding Brazil. Latin America is a difficult and unpredictable jurisdiction and the company has been able to organise an effective team to cover the region’. During the last few years, the team has been able to open its local subsidiary in Argentina, which has allowed it to manufacture locally and support the region.

Global transport and logistics company Kuehne + Nagel has more than 1,300 offices in 108 countries with more than 70,000 employees. Supporting its Argentina based operations, the Kuehne + Nagel Argentina legal team participates in the upkeep of the company’s affairs in the entire South and Central America region. The department manages and participates in acquisitions and a wide variety of commercial, litigation and compliance issues throughout South and Central America, providing advice to the regional CEO and vice presidents of each of the business units across the region. Outside its regional legal remit, the team also provides reporting to corporate headquarters in Switzerland and coordinates alignment of strategy on legal and compliance issues throughout the region. Some of the team’s leading members include regional general counsel, legal and compliance South and Central America Nicolas Schuster, and legal and compliance manager for the South Cone cluster, María Sol Santi. The team has also led the roll-out of compliance programs, including integrity due diligence on suppliers of almost all the countries of the region where Kuehne + Nagel provides services, code of conduct trainings and other management processes.

InterCement’s Argentina subsidiary Loma Negra is a market leader in the manufacturing of cement, concrete, and lime. Legal affairs manager Lucrecia Loureiro heads the leads team of around five individuals, and – having been at the company since 2011 – has deep understanding of the business. Other members of the department include legal director Luiz Klecz, senior legal counsel Gastón Sayús and legal counsel Mariana Villares. In addition to Loma Negra’s operations in Argentina, the team provide legal advice on the organisation’s subsidiary companies and activities in Paraguay. In a historical move for the company, the legal team assisted on Loma Negra’s IPO on the NYSE and BYMA in 2017 where the company raised over US$950m.

A compact but dynamic, knowledgeable and business-savvy legal function, multinational consumer products giant L’Oréal’s legal team in Argentina is comprised of three individuals; Solange Kurchan as legal manager, Matías Sorondo as senior lawyer and Catalina Blois as paralegal. According to Kurchan, the mantra of the team is to ‘make things happen in a safe way’, and this is evinced by its commitment to becoming ‘business partners of all the areas of the company by giving support and trying not to be the stick in the wheel’. Speaking to how this is achieved, Kurchan explains the team’s dedication to improving internal company working methods: ‘We implemented new processes, such as an advertising approval process that helps to speed up the approval of the advertisements of the company and to avoid misleading advertisements. This process reduced the number of claims by consumers’. Additionally, the team recently ‘drafted standard documents of the most used agreements and implemented a form of approval of agreements with customers in order to have all the commercial terms with customers duly approved by the directors of the company’. Going above and beyond, the team is responsible for giving educational talks regarding ‘the importance of the agreements in Argentina’ to relevant parties. Keen to stress the team’s emphasis on leadership and accountability, Kurchan states that ‘if something goes wrong the team, as a whole, is responsible’.

With over 50 years of local experience, US Fortune 500 company ManpowerGroup develops innovative human capital solutions for more than 2,000 clients in Argentina. The legal team at the Group’s local subsidiary, ManpowerGroup Argentina, is comprised of a number of talented and experienced lawyers, with Gonzalo Ruiz Diaz heading the function as legal affairs manager since 2012. Some of the in-house lawyers supporting Ruiz in the team include legal, tax and compliance manager Giselle Malagrino and Martina Larcamón, the latter of whom joined in 2017 and also predominantly works on legal, tax and compliance issues. As the company’s compliance area was added to the legal affairs function in 2015, local ethics and corporate compliance adviser Gonzalo Santiago Cadelago has a key role in the team. The team was commended for its role in ManpowerGroup Argentina’s collaboration agreement with the government of the province of Buenos Aires signed in 2018 to promote access to employment for vulnerable populations.

A major energy company in Argentina, Medanito provides both upstream exploration of oil and natural gas (including shale) and mid-stream processing of natural gas, as well as the generation of electrical power. Owning three production assets and stakes in further ones, the portfolio of responsibilities for the company’s legal team to tackle are many and varied. Fortunately, the company has a top-class legal function to enable this. Leading the team is Gonzalo Vaca Arenaza, an oil and gas specialist with seven years of experience at the company who reports directly to the board of directors and provides a legal aspect to their discussions. In support of him, the highly regarded team is able to count on the expertise of Fernando Esteban Carosio, another experienced lawyer who is equally capable in advising on corporate matters as well as energy related issues.

The legal team at the Argentine e-commerce company MercadoLibre comprises 20 employees (18 lawyers and two non-legal employees) led by senior vice president and general counsel Jacobo Cohen Imach and Gabriela Colombo who lead the general practice team, and Humberto Chiesi Filho who leads the dispute resolutions team. Having recently undergone changes to its organisational and reporting structure, the team now has a number of corporate legal heads, each covering a specific practice area, reporting to the general counsel, as well as country legal heads who report via a dotted or solid line to these corporate legal heads. Another recent change to the legal team has been related to its strategy, focus and strategic vision. Cohen says: ‘Our vision as in-house counsel of MercadoLibre is that we are business partners that must provide great quality legal advice delivered with common sense and in a commercial and timely manner. Our approach to work is problem solving and thinking about how something can get done’. Colombo adds: ‘We’ve also been very focused on legal operations, driving efficiency and innovation within the legal department. The team has been reviewing processes and workflows to detect opportunities for improvement and have been exploring how the use of technology can be useful in helping them to innovative, be creative and more cost effective’. Achievements from the last three years include the team’s coordination of legal work regarding the issuance of a convertible senior note of US$330m, coordination of an SEC registered secondary offering for an amount of US$1.6bn, legal structuring of various projects across Latin America and provision of support and coordination of acquisitions and post-merger integration of 13 companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico and the US. ‘I’m very proud of this team, it shows strong commitment and excellent results in a permanently changing industry, a growing company and a highly demanding environment like e-commerce and Fintech,’ Cohen says. ‘This team is recognised internally for its business awareness and approach and for always advising with business and common sense and a deep and solid legal understanding. In addition to the legal work, the team has had an active participation in several regulatory initiatives which may have impact on our businesses in the countries where we operate’.

Having had a presence in Argentina for over 80 years, Merck currently commands a dominant position in the local market for chemical drugs and biopharmaceuticals. The Argentine legal department at the company, led by dynamic lawyer Gonzalo Videla, provides general legal and compliance advice across the larger Southern Cone region of Latin America. Videla, who has served as a legal and compliance director at Merck for approximately five years, has overseen fundamental changes to the legal unit that have resulted in noticeable improvements to its work. These include standardisation of work carried out in the department, simplification of certain procedures and automation of key processes. Besides demonstrating what nominators described as an ‘ability to work under pressure, resolve conflicts and work as a team’, under Videla’s leadership Merck’s Southern Cone legal department has impressed with its handling of corporate transactions, in particular, closing strategic partnerships with other pharmaceutical companies involving contracts that contain important legal and compliance content. The team in charge of legal support to Merck’s Animal Health Division in the Southern Cone region, which is headed by María Michel, has also received wide praise by nominators in this year’s research; sources highlighted its effective legal support and coverage of specific areas such as commercial, corporate, labour and M&A.

Global US life insurer MetLife began its operations in Argentina in the mid-1990s. Heading the legal functions of the company in both Argentina and Uruguay is assistant vice president and legal and compliance director Federico Bravo, having served the company since 2016. One private practice nominator was full of praise for the team’s leadership, stating the following: ‘The leader of this team is an expert in his industry, in addition to being a generalist and a great complement to our own team’. Supporting Bravo in the legal team is assistant counsel manager Nicolás Vega Olmos, who heads legal corporate matters for Argentina and Uruguay and legal counsel Nicolás Ramos Mejía and Francisco Güidale who both joined in February 2018. The team was commended by nominators for contributing to the company’s defence in a large arbitration tribunal before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in 2018.

Technology giant Microsoft is supported in Argentina by lawyers that have decades of experience between them and oversee a wide remit encompassing legal affairs, corporate and compliance issues pertaining to not only Argentina but other countries in the Latin American continent. Microsoft recently partnered with Telefónica and other top technology names Facebook and Google to provide Aura, an artificial intelligence service that will be rolled out in six countries across Europe and Latin America including Argentina and Uruguay. Two of the most outstanding in-house lawyers in the technology sector in Argentina, team members Alejandro Anderlic and Clara Maria Bozzo came in for particular praise from nominating sources. Anderlic is the director of corporate, external and legal affairs as well as a member of Microsoft’s subsidiary leadership team, whilst Bozzo is the commercial legal director and also has the role of diversity and inclusion lead for Microsoft across Latin America.

Jackie Donaldson currently serves as the general counsel of Nestlé’s Plata region, which encompasses operations in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, having previously worked in a legal specialist position at the company. Donaldson’s career at Nestlé is marked by providing exceptional legal support to both local and cross-border transactions, as well as leading the highly recommended legal team assisting on these operations for the multinational company. Staffed with legal specialists advising on a number of different practice areas, the team is well-known for its specialist advice surrounding matters including the protection of brands across Nestlé’s portfolio in the food and beverage market.

Supporting the Southern Cone operations of the global sportswear brand Nike, the Argentine legal team is led by Southern Cone legal director Pablo Windhausen. Reporting into him and making up the rest of the team is Southern Cone legal manager María Mercedes Ribero and legal analyst Julieta López. As a team they deliver premium high quality service adding value to the business every day with a legal mission in mind: ‘create and protect shareholder value’, explains Windhausen. It is to this end that the team is constantly in touch with all team members from various areas of the company to proactively work on prevention and education. To this end it provides continuous internal support and implementation of compliance programs and initiatives, partaking in regular live and online trainings. One nominator says of the team, ‘[it] has developed an impressive capacity to reconcile the high standards of the company with the local and regional legal challenges in several areas such as customs, exchange controls, tax and contractual matters’. Key features of its work includes assisting on the transition of the distribution business in Paraguay to a different Nike business unit, a high profile sponsorship agreement between Nike and Confederación Argentina de Basketball as well as the renewal of sponsorship agreement with Argentine sports club San Lorenzo de Almagro.

The Argentine legal department of the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis embraces a “matrix-like” organisational structure, whereby the country legal heads of the internal divisions (Pharma, Onco, Alcon or Sandoz) report functionally to the regional legal head of each division and operationally to the divisional general managers. ‘In this sense, the level of collaboration and synergy that we have achieved is remarkable’, says legal and compliance head Ana Candelaria Alonso. ‘Each member of the team has a different legal background and legal expertise, and we are able to openly share knowledge and best practices’. With a deep understanding of the law, local business and market, the team is a key business partner that participates actively in the decision making process on a regional level, and has assisted Novartis’ portfolio transformation by supporting key transactions. Examples of notable deals completed by the team in the recent past include the acquisition of GSK’s oncology products business, the transfer of Novartis OTC business to GSK’s local venture, the divestment of Novartis’ vaccines business (excluding flu) to GSK, the divestment of Novartis’ Animal Health business to Eli Lilly and the divestment of Novartis flu business to CSL. ‘Working in Novartis legal requires not only a deep understanding of the law but also full commitment with the company values and behaviours (innovation, quality, performance, integrity, courage and collaboration),’ Alonso says. ‘The Argentine legal team is profoundly committed and engage with the company values and behaviours and ensures that are fully embraced by the business functions. We operate with high integrity standards seeking not only what is legal but also what is right’.

Founded in 2006, OLX Group is a global online marketplace which operates in 45 countries and is the largest online classified advertisements company in Pakistan, Brazil, India, Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal and Ukraine. In Argentina, OLX Group’s legal function has contributed to its emerging reputation and market-leading brands that are used by over 300 million people every month. The team is led by regional legal manager Santiago Gini who takes pride in having created an engaged team of well-prepared lawyers who ensure its activities run smoothly and that positive results are achieved. The team consistently works towards common goals that are frequently reviewed, including the setup of internal key performance indicators to organise and measure output. Comprised of a number of capable and diligent lawyers, the team has had to stay on top of various challenges posed by the complex foreign exchange policy and ever-changing tax legal frame it must deal with. The team plays a key role in communicating these complexities to other stakeholders, providing value to the business in several ways.

Sun Microsystems was integrated into the Oracle business after the multinational computer technology company’s acquisition in 2010. This complex merger of two leading technology companies required a tremendous amount of work from all the legal departments working on the dea;. After the completion of this transaction, the legal director of the Sun Microsystems’ Latin America division Lucio Fabani Larrañaga assumed his current role as senior legal director for Latin America at Oracle in June 2010. Today he leads the team of three in-house lawyers supporting the Southern Cone cluster which includes Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Amongst its members are senior legal counsel Andres Molinario who stands out for his focus in commercial transactions and corporate law and in-house lawyer Julio Valdivia, a new addition focused on commercial transactions, antitrust and privacy. Adapting to the Oracle business transformation into one of the major cloud services providers, has been one of the most integral changes to the department. The team has skilfully managed to stay abreast of challenges of new regulations such as privacy, competition and distribution and helping support internal customers so that Oracle may contribute with improving end user needs through innovation and technology.

Led by Mariano Romero de Haz, the legal team in Pampa Energía’s downstream and petrochemical business is known for its practical expertise and technical knowledge. Romero de Haz himself is an experienced legal professional who has had over 20 years working in the oil and gas sector, while senior lawyers Laura Marinovich and Christian Pereira also enjoy over two decades’ experience in the industry. Romero de Haz explains that the change of certain commercial conditions in the country in recent years has led to ‘a more friendly business environment’ that ‘required a constant redesign of our skills to meet the legal needs of our internal clients’, a major endeavour that has led to a corresponding improvement in the team’s abilities. It is a tightly-knit unit, with ‘a consolidated history of more than 15 years of working together’, and a record of success in the areas of ‘M&A, judicial and arbitration matters of importance to the company and many others’. Romero de Haz describes the team’s contribution to the business as such: ‘Our team allows the company to conduct profitable business with the minimum risk. This has been achieved after many years of experience advising businesses, using a shared leadership style that makes the team reliable’.

A subsidiary company owned 60% by BP and 40% by Bridas Corporation, Pan American Energy operates across Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay, and is the second largest producer of hydrocarbons in Argentina. Its legal team, led by recently appointed manager of legal affairs Fernando Fresco, provides hands-on support to the company’s two main operations – the Patagonia based San Jorge Gulf basin and the Neuquén basin situated in the Neuquén Province of Argentina. With key strengths identified by sources in the field of administrative law, advising and negotiating financial agreements and arbitration, the team has been instrumental with its support of the company’s aggressive expansion strategy in Argentina, which has seen it invest US$1.2bn in 2017 alone. Since late 2017, the team has provided advice on a cash-free transaction to combine Pan American Energy and Axion Energy, which is expected to create the largest privately-owned integrated energy company operating in Argentina. Besides Fernando Fresco, who joined Pan American Energy in September 2014 following a two-year stint at Fresco Abogados, the department employs a number of talented lawyers such as legal manager Tomas Dominguez, senior counsel Esteban Rivarola and senior attorney Francisco Manuel Jamardo.

PepsiCo Argentina has been present in the regional market for almost 60 years, and currently has a broad portfolio of food and beverage products such as Pepsi, Gatorade, Lay’s and Twistos. The company operates 15 sales branches, five distribution centres and a network of distributors reaching approximately 200,000 points of sale throughout the country. Despite such a wide geographic reach, the company employs a relatively small legal team in Argentina, which has nonetheless shown to be more than capable of dealing with a plethora of legal and compliance issues quickly and effectively. The team is led by highly praised corporate counsel Diego Cifone, described by sources as a ‘great motivator’, as well as a lawyer capable of ‘quickly spreading enthusiasm in achieving goals’ and ‘encouraging improvement on a day-by-day basis’. PepsiCo’s APU (Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) legal manager Maria Fernanda Delosangeles has also received wide praise from peers, with sources highlighting her attention to detail, ability to work within multidisciplinary teams and support PepsiCo’s operations in three countries.

Mariano Mazur leads the legal team of Perez Companc Family Group, a high profile Argentine business that has a variety of operations in its home territory as well as in a number of countries across Latin America, Spain and the US. The structure of internal legal support at the Group is devolved according to the different group companies, and as a result there are five separate teams for operative companies Molinos Río de la Plata, Molinos Agro, Pecom Servicios Energía, CONUAR and Goyaike. Supervising these teams, there is an additional team based in Perez Companc’s holding company and family office, which leads and oversees all legal teams and provides general legal advice across all areas and companies as well as to family shareholders. Mazur explains an initiative that develop a ‘working agenda between the holding and each operative company’ so as to have a ‘clear understanding’ of the matters that are relevant and strategic to shareholders, and are to be addressed not only by the internal legal team of that company but also by the wider holding legal team. He claims that this method is crucial in terms of ‘getting the best of all us’ and forges close relationships amongst team members that means they can ‘share different opinions, views and experiences’ with each other, always aiming to achieve the business and the shareholders goals. With a total team consisting of 19 lawyers and one non-lawyer in this structure, Mazur explains the culture of the function as having three distinct principles: ‘We have teams and persons with values that do things that generate value, a differential resource of our organisation is its people above economic or technological resources, and we foster personal motivation and development of all members so that each of them may realise their highest potential’. With these principles in mind, the company’s lawyers have dealt with significant cases in the last two years, mostly notably ‘a complex spin-off of Molinos Río de la Plata’s soybean crushing and exportation business and the setup of a new listed company – Molinos Agro’ which showed the team’s ability to grasp technical intricate legal concepts and utilise knowledge to achieve the goals of the business. Able to support the companies in a variety of new projects, Mazur explains the legal team’s central role to the Group’s re-entry into the energy sector, where it helped on ‘the acquisition and consolidation of Pecom Servicios Energía (formerly known as Skanska), the development of Combustibles Nucleares Argentinos S.A. (CONUAR) and the continuing analysis of business opportunities in the energy sector’.

Petrobras Argentina was first formed as the Argentina-based subsidiary of Brazilian energy conglomerate Petróleo Brasileiro, however is now under control of Argentina’s domestic energy giant Pampa Energía. Petrobras Argentina is the second largest oil company in Argentina and has a presence in the United States, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. The Argentine legal team is led by the hugely experienced general counsel Daniel Casal, who has been at the company for 25 years and has amassed 36 years of professional experience in total, mostly in the energy sector. Under his management, the legal team of Petrobras Argentina is highly trained to oversee all legal matters of the company and is staffed with legal experts in energy, corporate, financial and environmental, labour and litigious affairs. The team is comfortable in communication with its business colleagues, providing advice to a range of stakeholders including the CEO and board of directors. The team is constantly designing comprehensive legal solutions to deal with the company’s needs, risks, probabilities and strategies, forming the organisations strategic outlook and providing effective solutions to the company’s every day needs.

A fast-growing Argentine company in the energy sector, Petroquímica Comodoro Rivadavia (PCR) employs a legal team that is driven by the values of ‘teamwork and leadership’ according to Mariano Juárez Goñi, the most senior lawyer in the team and the company’s general counsel. A medium sized business, PCR’s main market sector is the energy industry and works on a transnational basis in Argentina, Ecuador and Chile. Juárez explains that it is ‘strongly investing in the renewable energy industry and continues to grow in the oil and gas sector as well as the cement industry’. Being a business enabling function, the company’s legal team is set up to help with this ambition by utilising its ‘extensive experience in the different industries that PCR is involved in, and is therefore used to leverage our experience and analytical, technical and interpersonal skills, as well as apply them in pursuit of PCR’s interests’. A team of five members which must adapt to provide legal services in a flexible way, Juárez is proud of the function’s contribution on many important cases and transactions, stating ‘there are many but I would say that the financing transactions of different wind farms in Argentina, as well as the previous bidding processes to win and obtain the permits for such farms were the most important challenges in the last year’.

The Pluspetrol legal team has proven its qualities time and again, successfully providing key legal support to every part of the company’s operations. This is no small feat, given that the company is Argentina’s third-largest oil producer, and much of the company’s success can be traced back to excellent internal procedures and expertly-led business units. Indeed, the senior lawyers at Pluspetrol are extremely highly recommended. Legal manager Claudio Norberto Vazquez’s impressive set of achievements within the energy sector mark him out as one of the leading in-house counsel in Argentina, having achieved experience at Metrogas, Edesur, TGS, Ecuador TLC and an extended period with Petrobras Argentina since 1992. With a similarly impressive skillset, legal manager Diego Roizen has been an in-house fixture at Pluspetrol since late 2005, specialising in finance and M&A work along with oil and gas. Senior lawyers Maria Carolina Crespo and Ivan Daireaux are also highly competent oil and gas lawyers who have a number of years of experience with Pluspetrol.

Senior counsel for Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, Nicolás Cuadros describes the Philip Morris International (PMI) in-house legal team covering the South Cluster as ‘extremely creative, diverse and full of energy’. It has undoubtedly had a major impact on a number of successes for the company, and now looks to take the lead in the company’s transformation towards a ‘smoke-free future’ using new technologies. ‘We want adult smokers to switch from cigarettes to Reduced Risk Products (RRPs) as soon as possible, so we’re currently analysing the regulatory framework for RRPs in the South Cluster’, Cuadros explains. He also gives an example of the RRPs portfolio the company developed to achieve this: ‘We currently have products such as Iqos that heats tobacco instead of burning it, without combustion, fire, ash, or smoke’. The team has been heavily involved in laying the groundwork for a new regulatory understanding of these products in the markets that PMI operates in. ‘From a legal perspective this is a huge challenge’, says Cuadros, ‘because regulatory restrictions in many countries were inspired by a different product – cigarettes. When these regulations were written, regulators didn’t imagine that products such as Iqos would appear which should be regulated in a different fashion’. Alongside Cuadros, the PM South Cluster legal team is staffed by a number of high-quality legal professionals: Alberto Fortin, Tamara Canete, Agustina Ramet, Pilar Mele and Juan Pablo Reverendo came in for particular praise, and look set to carry on the exceptional record set by former team lead Luciana Tieri, who has transferred to PMI’s Canada operation.

Since setting up in Argentina in 1991, multinational consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) has invested over US$1bn in its operations in the country and its products today are used in 90% of Argentine households. Prominent figures within the legal team at Procter & Gamble Argentina are legal director Alejandro Lorusso and Jimena Cobreros. Responsible for all legal and corporate issues in Latin America, Cobreros occupies a multifaceted role as an associate director and associate general counsel for the company’s brand division on top of managing the legal regional department. She and the team have been featured for effortlessly providing legal support to the business on FCPA, antitrust and compliance matters as well as for construing P&G’s global standards and policies according to global strategy and local scenarios.

The legal team at Sanofi’s South Cone operation (based in Buenos Aires but with jurisdiction over Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) is led by Inés Riobó, who is a member of the country council and reports to Sanofi’s head of legal in Latin America. Veronica Aceiro joined in December 2014 and since then, two new members – Florencia Queralto and Camila Fernandez Llorente – have been added to its ranks to reflect the department taking on new internal clients and responsibilities. The most important change implemented in the last two years, however, was the division and appointment of individual members of the team as primary business partners for each of the company’s various business units and support functions. According to the team’s leader, Inés Riobó, ‘this simplifies communication, project follow-ups, and fosters a sense of ownership of projects by each legal partner’. She elaborates further as follows: ‘In the implementation of this work structure, the specific expertise in different areas (e.g. digital, corporate law, logistics and distribution, pharmaceuticals, antitrust and general commercial), is taken into account and transversal cooperation among team members is ensured, in order to capitalise on technical knowledge that each one can provide to render the most complete services possible’. The team has consistently impressed with its transactional skills, especially in the review and implementation of recent corporate acquisitions by the Sanofi Group. Over the past few years, Sanofi’s legal department has also brought immense value to the company by supporting the launch of new products, navigating the country’s complex legal and economic scenarios, facilitating various internal corporate reorganisations, enabling the launch of digital apps and participating in cross-functional ad-hoc committees providing advice upon request to CAEME, the trade association grouping multi-national pharmaceutical companies in Argentina. The Sanofi South Cone legal department supports the business divisions involving pharmaceuticals, specialty care, vaccines, consumer health care and rare diseases, as well as all support functions and the large clinical studies unit.

SAP is a software multinational corporation that, despite its headquarters being located in Germany, is a truly global business with regional offices in 180 nations across the world. Its activities in Latin America is concerned with some of the most technologically advanced software solutions in the realms of digital business, the Internet of Things and machine learning, and offers a range of products that span different industry sectors and a deep pool of customers across the region. Javier Recobiche is the vice president legal for SAP Latin America South, and is highly commended for his leadership ability of a team that attends to Argentine legal matters in a comprehensive and accurate way no matter the challenge. As a nominating source states, Recobiche is in charge of a ‘very knowledgeable team’ which ‘seeks to show in every matter, regardless of complexity, the most practical and effective solution’.

SAS Institute, the US multinational analytical software developer, is a company that continues to expand its presence outside its home market. The growth of SAS in Latin America is overseen by a talented multijurisdictional legal team. As part of a well-balanced legal structure, head legal counsel Dr. Federico Frachia Sabaris holds responsibility for a team covering Argentina, Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay. Explaining the company’s immense faith in the team, Frachia says, ‘SAS gives autonomy and trust to all of its lawyers, searching the market for intelligent leaders with new ideas. The community of lawyers work back-to-back, in constant communication but with full autonomy to achieve goals’. Having a direct report to SAS’s legal directors in Brazil and Canada, Frachia highlights the implementation of new software within the legal team as a factor that has allowed it to run even more efficiently: ‘We are working on adapting an online automated contract enforceable in any jurisdiction, which represent a large effort given the different legislation across jurisdictions of the globe. The ACE (short for Automated Contract Entry) should help to reduce time around legal negotiations’. One of the most important aspects to the team’s work is communication across different teams, which Frachia explains is ‘extremely necessary’ to obtain any good legal result. He states: ‘The key to obtaining better results for the corporation, is not only to observe the legal perspective of the matter in concern, but to work in constant and fluent communication with the country managers and other different areas’. This is to ‘detect, understand and visualise the healthiest outcome of any situations and move the correct pieces on the board’. Highlighted in helping achieve this is the country manager for Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay Gustavo Gutman. On explaining the ethos behind the team’s success in delivering for the business, Frachia says: ‘Great achievements are nurtured through the cooperation of many minds with a common vision working toward a common goal’.

The Argentina based legal team of multinational company Schlumberger was described by nominators as having ‘effective collaboration and open communication’, ensuring that the Buenos Aires based team is at the forefront of any legal risk posed to the company’s significant business interests in the region. Advising on a number of issues pertaining to the world’s largest oilfield services company, team members include Latin America South legal counsel Fernando Duarte, who is not only responsible for his home market of Argentina, but the entirety of Schlumberger’s Latin America South Geomarket, which includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Contracts manager Julian Ferreiro is also recognised, having spent over a decade at Pan American Energy as a senior legal counsel he is currently responsible for the oversight of Schlumberger’s contract management across the entire Latin America South region.

The multinational oil and gas giant Shell has ambitious plans for Argentina, having recently announced a target to invest $300m per year in the country through to 2020 in exploration, refining, distribution, sales and marketing activities. The company’s assets in Argentina include the Cruz de Lorena oil block and Vaca Muerta shale deposit in Patagonia, which boasts the second largest reserves of shale gas worldwide. A significant element of these expansion efforts in Argentina has been Shell’s regional in-house legal team, led by managing counsel and head of legal Argentina Fabian Braghieri, a lawyer who assumed his current position in mid-2016 and has a vast amount of experience in joint ventures and commercial and regulatory advice on corporate contractual matters. Praised for his experience in managing litigation across Latin America and Caribbean, he has trained and influenced the legal team to effectively implement litigation strategy on a wide variety of matters including exploitation concessions and joint operation agreements.

Having started operations in Argentina in 1857, the German conglomerate Siemens has a strong and long-standing presence in the country. Today, among its 1,600 Argentine employees is the company’s legal team headed by general counsel Barbara Maggi, who has been in place since since 2010. The team has been credited for their work on overseeing Siemens’ agreement to partner the Argentinian government on $5.6bn worth of infrastructure projects since joining. In late 2017 the team earned further industry recognition for securing Siemens’ contract to increase the capacity of its Genelba gas-fired power plant in Argentina from its existing 168MW to around 364MW working with its Argentine partner Techint to undertake the overall expansion.

The two-person legal team at the Argentine joint venture operation of the multinational food and agribusiness company Simplot, deals with all legal matters faced by the business regionally, providing support to the internal client demands and acting as business partner when it comes to new business opportunities. Legal manager Clara Mazzeo, who has been with the company for nearly four years, takes charge of more complex matters, such as financing structures, corporate structure and trade union matters, compliance and internal politics. Her recently hired colleague Sofia Canavessi, on the other hand, reviews and coordinates the execution of ongoing business contracts and corporate books, undertakes administrative coordination and handles daily notifications and correspondence. Recent consolidation of Simplot’s business in Argentina has resulted in a deepening and increasing of volume of the legal team’s activities, which is now in the process for supporting the construction of an industrial processing plant in the Mendoza province related to a $100m investment project. In 2017, the team has made a vital contribution to the commercialisation of pre-fried potatoes and guacamole across Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, and was instrumental in the execution of a syndicated loan as project finance with a group of private and public banks.

Socma and Sideco Americana, an engineering, construction, real estate development, concessions and utilities company, has already achieved the distinction of having its in-house legal staff recognised in the industry. Antonio Solsona, the company’s attorney general counsel, was recognised in The Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Argentina in 2017 for his broad experience and expertise regarding all matters that affect the group in addition to his management of the legal department. Nominating sources in the private practice realm describe a ‘strong team that understands the importance of regular, open communication’, and is well-known for its expertise in corporate law matters, M&A deals, commercial contracts and corporate matters as well as contracts in the areas of oil and gas, renewable energies and the automotive sector. The team is also commended for its international outlook; advising on business-effecting matters not only in the country’s home territory of Argentina but in foreign courts as well, providing both legal security and business acumen on behalf of the Socma and Sideco Americana group and its companies.

Syngenta is a Swiss global agribusiness that has a number of business interests including genomic research, agrochemicals and seed production, and organises its activities in Argentina as part of its wider Latin America South business unit. The legal team that services the Syngenta business in this region is led by Esteban Mazzucco, the legal director for Latin America South and an inclusion in 2017’s GC Powerlist: Argentina. Complementing the experience and skills Mazzucco possesses are a group of motivated, talented and dedicated in-house lawyers that deal with a range of legal and compliance issues spanning the agriculture industry. Together they worked on implementing the recent purchase by Syngenta of Nidera Seeds, a key player in Latin America’s seeds market.

Founded in 1995, Tarjeta Shopping (Tarshop) is a revolutionary payment service that aims to provide retail customers with a convenient payment method at shopping malls and other stores around the country, issuing and providing administrative services on credit cards for this purpose. ‘Recognised for the deep knowledge of its business’ by nominators, the Tarshop in-house legal team utilises this extensive knowledge of the company when providing legal and commercial advice, advising on complex litigation and representing the company in front of competition bodies. The team is also very experienced, highlighted by manager of legal affairs Gabriel Edgardo Romeo who has been with the company since late 2010 and who reports directly to the general manager of the company.

An Italian-Argentine conglomerate with headquarters in both Milan and Buenos Aires, Techint is composed of six main companies with an international reach and now has a workforce of over 50,000 permanent employees. The Argentine legal team is led by the highly decorated legal director Fernando Jorge Mantilla who has held the role since 2015, and whose long tenure with the company first began in 1996. The legal department of the Techint group of companies is composed of approximately 45 lawyers (a mixture of experienced and junior qualified lawyers) and around 20 non-lawyers (paralegals and assistants). The team also draws on the experience of former legal directors in the role of advisors, Horacio de las Carreras and Ignacio Casares, both former directors of the legal department until 2016. All of this combines to produce a team that has ‘evolved from basic legal departments to an essential function of a business that provides a wide variety of legal and commercial advice’ according to an internal source. A range of senior counsel lead the various disciplines that make up the team’s structure, the aforementioned De las Carreras is in charge of the corporate law and capital markets area, whilst other legal heads take charge of legal departments spanning engineering and construction (Diego Zonis), oil and gas (Mariano Vitullo), international contracts (Alfonso de Laferrere), litigation (Enrique Milone), employment and labour law (Julio Cordero), tax law (Juan José Godoy), commercial contracts (Martin Arriola) and new ventures (Fernando Moreno). Speaking to the many business affecting transactions the team has worked on recently, the team acted as Argentine in-house counsel to Techint’s oil and gas interest Tecpetrol, where it offered of US$500m worth of senior notes under a US$1bn authorised program in full compliance with the US Securities Act. The team also acted as in-house counsel to Techint Engineering & Construction in a consortium between Macquarie Capital and Techint, formed to acquire and obtain project finance for a combined cycle power plant in Mexico. The consortium successfully acquired the 907MW power generation site – referred to as Norte III – from distressed Spanish technology solutions company Abengoa. In 2016, the Techint Group entered the mining industry through Tenova’s acquisition of several companies operating in the field. The company’s current position in the Argentine market was achieved in no small part thanks to huge investment the past decade. The team has been present in every step of this expansion, and with the motto of ‘risk mitigation [as] the essence of the legal department’s function within the Techint group of companies’, has helped towards making it one of the leading conglomerates in Latin America.

Telecom Argentina is a major Argentine telephone operator that covers the Northern part of Argentina including the capital city of Buenos Aires. Having grown incrementally since its foundation in 1990, the company has been the beneficiary of a strong in-house legal team which has contributed to a rapid ascension in the market. The Telecom Argentina legal team is praised for its ability to deal with complex M&A transactions and joint venture deals in an efficient manner. Telecom Argentina has recently announced a US$5bn investment plan for the 2018-2020 triennium, which is designed to increase telephone and mobile internet radiobases, extend the company’s “Next Generation” networks and to improve the company’s connectivity infrastructure as to be able provide multiplay services. The legal team will be crucial to the success of this expansion project, proving its ability to serve one of the major players in Argentina’s telecommunications industry by achieving its ambitious plans and growing its presence in the country.

Telefe is an Argentine broadcaster located in Buenos Aires and is also a television network and one of Argentina’s five national television channels. As of November 2016, in a bid to expand its footprint in Latin America, Viacom acquired Telefe Group from the last owner Telefónica de Contenidos. As a result of this transaction, the legal team of Viacom in Argentina (MTV’s operation) and Telefe’s legal team merged its operation under the responsibility of legal vice president, Fernando Varela and currently this team is integrated into Viacom BALA (Business and Legal Affairs). Well recognised in the market for its efficiency, the team is described as ‘a team fully committed to the entertainment and television content business’. The legal function is made up of seven lawyers, an individual who is in the process of being admitted to the bar, one paralegal and one assistant. Each team member has a specific area of expertise and responsibility; ‘when circumstances require it, we combine these talents to take advantage of its expertise in favour of the company’s goals’ concedes Varela. The team has been closely involved in a number of significant transactions; the sale process of Telefe being one of the most significant operations which involved its active contribution in different steps of the transaction. The team’s vast skill-set and robust understanding of the sector enabled the smooth execution of the aforementioned deal. ‘We are a team of lawyers with a large background in top-tier law firms of Argentina, thus we took that work culture to the entertainment and television content business’, says Varela.

Owned by the Spanish broadband and telecommunications giant Telefónica, Telefónica Argentina stands as the largest and leading fixed-line operator in the country. It provides broadband, local and long distance telephone services in Southern Argentina and greater Buenos Aires. General secretary Alejandro Pinedo leads the legal team providing advice to the various activities of the company. Through his 15 year tenure at Telefónica, Pinedo is regarded as having an expert understanding of the company and an accomplished team leader. The team has brought a wide range of experience to the day to day activities of the department, contributing to its reputation as one of the leading mobile and broadband operator in the market. One nominator states they bring ‘a good balance of skills and abilities’ a key factor which makes them ‘acknowledged in the market’. Operating in a highly regulated telecommunications sector has required the legal team to constantly stay abreast of the regulatory framework in Argentina that is constantly changing and tightening.

Luxemburg-headquartered Ternium is the leading steel company in Latin America, producing flat and long steel products in its major manufacturing centres in Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala. The company’s Argentina-based legal team operates as a well-organised unit comprised of savvy and commercially aware lawyers who are known for their excellent technical expertise across a variety of areas. Led by Fernando Duelo, a lawyer with over 20 years of experience at Ternium, the team has received credit for supporting the commercial and strategic of the company, as well as assisting to its recent efforts to expand in Brazil. Besides showcasing exceptional communication with other Ternium departments to provide ongoing support to the company, the regional legal team has impressed with its handling of transactional work. In 2017 it provided advice to Ternium’s acquisition of Brazilian steel company CSA Siderúrgica do Atlântico.

María Mercedes Olano is the current head of legal department for BTM’s Buenos Aires branch, and leads a team that is compact, dynamic and extremely well integrated into the Japanese multinational’s wider business structure. Olano works alongside legal analyst Pamela Higgins in reporting to BTM’s headquarters in New York as well as the bank’s head office in Tokyo, and the team is charged with providing comprehensive legal support for all activities related to the Argentine branch of the bank. Collaborative and engaged with its business colleagues, Olano states the team takes a ‘general view of the branch’s strategy, focused on the business plan [and] trying to align my role within this context’. This is achieved via a number of methods of support, including the provision of ‘training to other departments of the branch, for explaining to them the purpose of certain regulations to resolve doubts and clear up any comments’. The BTM team is also given responsibility for project leadership: ‘I lead certain projects with proactive attitude working multidisciplinary environment in an integrated way, [working] very closely with the head office based in Tokyo and the American headquarters based in New York on the implementation of global policies and procedures’. The aforementioned Pamela Higgins is described as an attorney with ‘several highly valued skills which help in providing accurate responses to internal clients, advice on a daily basis to departments… and interacting fluently with other professionals explaining local regulations and requirements’. Widely praised for its efforts, one nominating source said of the team: ‘The team has helped the local legal presence of the biggest Japanese bank in some very high profile transactions in Argentina, including foreign trade, acquisitions and dispositions. And these transactions not only involve complex issues of local law, but in many cases have required the application of very sophisticated concepts of New York law. Olano’s grasp of these issues is impressive’.

The Walt Disney Company’s legal team in the wider Latin America region is represented by a number of outstanding in-house lawyers. The head of Disney’s Latam legal team is Nikki Keat, who is supported in Argentina by directors Laura Canessa, Federico Pagliettini, Ana Ibarzabal and Augusto Mengelle. The team is completed by senior attorneys Lucia Druetta, Maria Rellan and Rosario Schmukler, each of whom have played an important role in executing the company’s ambitions in the region in a legally compliant and commercially-aware manner. With Disney running a number of channels, a primary focus of the team is contract-related. The team has also been credited for effortlessly overseeing the implementation of the parent organisation's global deals in the region.

Transportadora de Gas del Norte (TGN) is dedicated to the transport of natural gas by high pressure gas pipelines in Argentina’s central and northern regions. Its vast operations mean it requires a legal team of experienced and long-serving professionals who understand the company’s workings deeply. Marcelo Brichetto, who joined TGN in 1998, is at the helm of the legal function serving as general counsel and board member. Supporting him in the role are senior lawyers Alejandra Marcozzi, who joined in 2005, and legal coordinators Magdalena Gravino and María Soledad López. Having accumulated decades of experience at TGN between them, the legal team has been highlighted by peers for working on numerous projects from multimillion-dollar, multijurisdictional litigations to large national public and private tenders.

Multinational broadcasting firm Turner is a world renowned television and media company that has recently seen a huge increase in its footprint in the Latin American market. In 2017 Turner won a joint contract to broadcast Argentine football matches for five years starting in 2018 as well as a purchase agreement for television rights to Chilean league football. Crucial to the success of these ventures as well as providing continent-wide legal support, Turner’s legal team in the Latin America region is based in Buenos Aires and is led by vice president legal and regional counsel Victor Roldan. The team has lawyers based in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and the US. In Argentina, Roldan is surrounded by outstanding legal professionals including senior counsel Mariana Oteiza and counsels Jorge Bacaloni and Maria Perez Otero, with the latter two set to undertake a worldwide compliance responsibility from 2018. Magdalena Chiesa and Daniela Pisano complete the team’s Argentina based lawyers in the role of associate counsel and legal coordinator respectively. Noting the team’s increase in workload during the recent past, Roldan explains the commitment of Turner’s Latin America lawyers and their drive to get things done: ‘Since we won sports rights in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, our legal department [has been] non-stop working during the week and weekends too, particularly supporting antipiracy initiatives’. Despite its international and cross-border remit, the Turner legal team is stacked full of local talent, and Roldan states he is ‘proud to have built a local department that [had] led the change of the international legal team’.

Covering Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, Unilever’s Southern Cone operations cover a range of jurisdictions and regulatory regimes. The legal team tasked with overseeing the multinational consumer products conglomerate’s business is spearheaded by legal director South Cone Paula Morrone, a legal professional with 23 years of experience at the company. During the course of this year’s research, a nominator spoke of the team in glowing terms: ‘The team has great exposure to the region in a wide variety of areas, mainly in antitrust. Its leader, [Morrone], has an extraordinary capacity to deal with several legal issues in all the region, with great legal knowledge, outstanding political savvy, flexibility and understanding of the different cultural approaches to issues. It works as an integrated team, led by Paula Morrone, and has clear objectives, is pro-business and is very professional’. Other important figures in the team include legal director for supply chain in Latin America Alvaro Repetto, head of the labour and litigation legal department Jonathan Nicolas Dymant and legal managers Marina Codesal, Julieta Crouzel, Maria Cecilia Neira and Romina Tenca.

Topping Fortune’s Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies by revenue, Walmart has had successful operations in Latin America for several years, and legal support to its Argentina subsidiary is provided by a team led by distinguished general counsel Brenda Puig, an inclusion in 2017’s GC Powerlist Argentina. Nominated for its ‘vast experience and knowledge of the major retail [sector]’, the team deals and manages ‘a wide range of topics’ to ensure the legal profile of the company is secure. Also praised for its collaborative ability, Walmart Argentina’s legal team works in conjunction with its internal tax team, assisting on the compliance with all local and other applicable tax codes. Working amidst a background of a challenging market from a business standpoint, nominators praised the team’s development of ‘great processes to help them achieve their purpose and performance goals’. One source explained that the team ‘manages a wide range of topics and [has] excellent coordination with its internal tax team. We receive perfectly agreed consultations between the legal and tax areas [and note] the team’s ability to respond under pressure and great capacity to solve complex issues’.

German-headquartered Wintershall has an extensive operation in Argentina that requires the support of expert business units behind the scenes in order to function effectively. Its legal team in Argentina continues this dynamic, and is staffed by highly capable lawyers who are also commercially minded and exceptional organisers. Legal, compliance and public affairs manager J. Ignacio Costa has steadily added to his roles since joining the company as a senior legal counsel in 2011, indicating the impressive fact that he has continued to impress as he has contributed more to the company. Senior legal counsels Ana Watson and Gastón Bentancurt both take on cross-border responsibilities for the company’s efforts in Latin America, which span multiple countries, highlighting the wide knowledge base and impressive professional craft that the team can bring to bear.

The legal team at the heart of the Argentine state-owned oil company YPF provides legal support across the full spectrum of the organisation’s supply chain, which includes oil and gas exploration and production, and the transportation, refining and marketing of gas and petroleum products. Besides highlighting the team’s work to protect YPF’s interests and competitive position during negotiations with a major international oil company, sources praised the team’s resolve and determination in facilitating YPF’s recent acquisition of a 120MW power plant from Central Puerto, as well as its acquisition of a 50% stake in Petrofaro. YPF’s legal team is led by experienced corporate lawyer Germán Fernández Lahore, who has successfully navigated the department through significant changes in the Argentine oil industry, including a 2012 renationalisation order which saw the government of Argentina take a 51% controlling stake in YPF. Other exceptional lawyers highlighted in this year’s research include senior counsel for exploration & production María Luján Carrodani, senior legal counsel Francisco Gáspariand and downstream legal services manager Fabián Carlos Valle.