About

Clarissa Surgeon’s legal career has spanned close to 20 years, with positions in law firms and corporations in Panama City, New York and Brussels, working across various legal fields, primarily tax, corporate and maritime law. Her in-house career started in 2012 at Juegos de Video de Latinoamerica (JVLat) the video game distribution company of the Motta Group. Motta is a highly entrepreneurial regional group based in Panama, with activities across a variety of commercial and industry sectors, including distribution, retail, services, logistics, among others in some notable companies such as Colón Free Zone, Copa Airlines, TVN Media, Banco General and Assa insurance. Surgeon was initially hired by JVLat to complete a tax corporate restructuring and went on to organise the company’s legal and control framework. In 2014, she was selected to join the formation of a shared services unit, as head of legal with the purpose of uniting 65 of Motta’s companies, spanning across 18 jurisdictions, within the distribution, services, retail and logistics groups in Motta. During this task she had the responsibility of forming a legal department from scratch. As all legal work across the organisation was managed primarily independently across all the group’s companies and without standardised processes, her role involved organising all corporate and commercial documentation and establishing various internal processes and controls. ‘Today, even though we still are fine tuning our existing processes, after four years of working with the management teams across the various companies throughout the region, we have created a more profound team culture, where Motto’s executives know that they can count on the share services unit to provide advice and collaboration in a seamless manner to fulfil their legal and business needs’, says Surgeon. She has proven her ability to work through the challenges of dealing with different types of industries and activities throughout 18 jurisdictions in Latin America and Europe, across all legal areas – commercial, corporate, intellectual property, tax, criminal law, labour and immigration. Amongst her highlights, Surgeon was part of the core team in charge of obtaining the first audited consolidated financial statements for the unit’s holding company. ‘This was a complex project which required many hours of gathering and producing documentation to comply with the auditor’s requirements, as well as coordinating the finance and accounting divisions across the various companies throughout the region’, says Surgeon. Some of her most noteworthy transactions include the joint venture between GameStop, the largest retail videogame company and JVLat, she participated in the due diligence process, as JVLat’s in-house counsel, as well as part of the negotiating teams for the share purchase agreement and partner’s agreement. Outside of her role she has been involved within the Panamanian chapter of the Women’s Corporate Directors Association (WCD). ‘My participation within this organisation has been an important part of my development as it has allowed me to hone my leadership skills through formal training programs, as well as through informal mentoring with renowned leaders of the Panamanian business community’, adds Surgeon.