About

As regional general counsel for Tetra Pak in the Americas, Roberto Paes oversees the legal affairs for Tetra Pak’s operations throughout North, Central and South American countries. In-line with this wide geographical area, Paes has a large practice area remit in his role, including matters related to growth transactions, alliances, commercial sales, local strategic sourcing arrangements and dispute resolutions. Paes also deals with general commercial law, corporate law and compliance matters wherever they arise for the multinational food packaging and processing group. A key change from an organisational standpoint was Paes’ effort to ‘eliminate geographical barriers to allow teamwork through a global network’, greatly improving communication lines between countries. In his day-to-day work Paes draws from more than 20 years of legal experience both as in-house lawyer and external counsel, advising local and foreign clients in many different industries. Paes was first employed by Tetra Pak in 2011 when he was appointed legal director of the Central and South American regions. He started his in-house career as GE’s Latin America regional general counsel, building on a private practice experience at law firms including Mattos Filho, Veiga Filho, Marrey Jr.e Quiroga Advogados and Mayer Brown across various practice areas. As private practice lawyer he participated in several cross border M&A and financing transactions, including bond offerings, consent solicitations, tender offers, exchange offers and bank financings. After the conclusion of the research phase, Paes left Tetra Pak to start an MBA at MIT to further his already impressive corporate and commercial knowledge.