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

Over the past year, our team has been actively involved in cross-border structured finance and syndicated lending transactions across Latin America. This included secured and unsecured credit facilities, receivables purchase programs, and derivatives under ISDA frameworks, often governed by New York law with collateral and enforcement considerations in multiple jurisdictions.

A significant focus has been on complex receivables purchase structures and pre-export finance facilities for commodity producers and multinational groups. These transactions required coordination between New York law documentation and local security packages, along with careful analysis of enforceability, tax efficiency, including withholding and stamp taxes and sanctions compliance.

We also supported the bank’s standardisation and regional implementation of derivatives documentation, ensuring consistent contractual frameworks across jurisdictions while addressing regulatory and operational risks. This initiative involved close collaboration with other areas of the bank, particularly Treasury, as well as risk teams, to build a legal framework that enables scalable growth.

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

During market instability, in-house counsel must be practical. The goal is not to predict every outcome but to ensure the bank can act decisively within established policies and guidelines.

Crises often expose vulnerabilities in governing law, guarantees, collateral, tax structures, or sanctions. The focus is on creating conditions for effective response while maintaining alignment with Credit and Business. Risks must be clearly identified, consciously accepted and documented, with any deviations from policy fully transparent.

Preserving optionality is key, strong transfer provisions, guarantees as primary obligations, clear acceleration mechanics and precise tax allocations provide leverage if conditions deteriorate. Crisis management is not theoretical; it is about ensuring recoverability and maintaining operational and legal leverage.

Disciplined documentation, adherence to guidelines and anticipation of stress scenarios help the bank navigate uncertainty confidently.

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

For me, the most important attributes combine legal expertise with practical business judgment. Counsel must translate complex legal issues into actionable guidance, anticipating how decisions will play out in practice.

Equally important are adaptability and clear communication. Priorities and legal environments can shift rapidly, particularly across borders. Counsel must pivot, provide concise advice under pressure and work with other areas to support informed decision-making.

A modern in-house lawyer also needs linguistic and cultural fluency and emotional intelligence to navigate interpersonal dynamics. At the end of the day, we are assisting real humans making decisions under uncertainty, and recognising this human dimension is as critical as understanding contracts or regulations.

Finally, integrity and credibility are essential. When business can rely on your judgment, legal guidance becomes truly effective and supports better decision-making, rather than merely reacting to issues.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Cross-border regulatory complexity continues to rise, particularly around sanctions, anti-money laundering, and tax compliance. Even established structures can be challenged by changing rules, making proactive monitoring, early issue identification, and close alignment with all relevant areas of the bank critical to maintaining effective and compliant transactions.