About

Described as possessing ‘great focus on material issues as well as deep legal knowledge’, Matias Giaccardi, international pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories’ senior counsel for the Southern Cone region, is highly respected by private practice clients and in-house colleagues alike. In providing legal support for the Southern Cone region of Abbott, Giaccardi is tasked with developing and maintaining regulatory and legislative strategy across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Giaccardi undertook a huge jump in seniority in assuming this position, having previously held a corporate counsel role at Nestlé. The senior counsel role at Abbott was not only a change of sector but also saw him providing legal advice that serves ‘different business units, different lines to different areas of the business and all businesses at all times’. This scope requires him to have knowledge of different realms of business law including corporate, M&A, drafting and revision of contracts, public law, antitrust matters, merger control proceedings, complex litigation and intellectual property. As the pharmaceutical sector throws up challenges that are usually regulatory in nature, Giaccardi utilises an intimate approach and builds relationships with stakeholders to mitigate issues; explaining that he prefers to ‘meet with people and identify correct stakeholders and understand in what ways different authorities and the government are moving in terms of trends; having this network of stakeholders and 360 degree approach towards different legal issues are the most significant actions to overcome challenges’. Giaccardi is a proponent of stability and calls for Argentinian public bodies and institutions to be ‘more predictable in knowing where the law is going’. He started his formal legal career at Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal where he spent nine years building experience in the litigation department along with the corporate and antirust practices.