About

Leónidas Castillo Carrillo is the head of corporate and retail legal advisory at Banco Santander Rio, a commercial bank and financial services company affiliated to the Santander Group. Based in Buenos Aires, its banking operations are the third largest in Argentina, as well as the largest among all privately owned banks in the country. Having been at Santander Rio for more than 13 years, Castillo ‘perfectly understands the commerciality of their business and truly knows how to read different stakeholders’, as one nominator says. As head of corporate and retail legal advisory, Castillo advises the Bank’s board and senior management on all legal and regulatory matters, and is responsible for managing the in-house advisory legal team and external law firms. He highlights his involvement in some of the most significant M&A transactions in Argentina in recent years, including Santander Rio’s purchase of the retail banking business of BNP Paribas in 2010 and Citibank in 2016, as well as several lending and securities transactions. Talking about his current role, he says ‘the legal environment is particularly complex in Argentina and requires both a practical approach and deep legal knowledge to address matters. I also have to learn from other fields such management and finance in order to provide better advice’. The recent development of digital business and financial technology are imposing new challenges: ‘I have to organise the team in a more efficient and timely manner to provide legal solutions’ he comments. Before joining Santander Rio, Castillo worked at Lloyds TSB where he participated in the sale of the bank and its subsidiaries to Banco Patagonia in 2004. In addition to his in-house legal career, Castillo has been an assistant professor at the University of Buenos Aires, teaching economic constitutional law since 2011.