About

At the beginning of 2009, Marysabel Maldonado de Coindet was selected as the only lawyer, alongside two engineers and two financial managers, to assist with due diligence for a divestment process Shell Group had initiated in Central America. ‘I was the focal point for leading the post-closing team. It was one of the best assignments I had. I had the opportunity of dealing and managing a post-closing relation, involving the managing [and] administration of more than 50 litigation cases, of which to this date I have been able to successfully close more than 90%’, says Maldonado. Since then he has been behind a number of moves and transactions taken on by the company. In 2011, she was involved in the significant acquisition of Chevron in Belize, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, leading the due diligence process, anti-trust authorisation, negotiation of SPA and closing documents, resulting in, according to Maldonado, a ‘very smooth’ transaction and negotiation. By 2012, after she was promoted to her current position of corporate regional manager, Maldonado was tasked with a new investment opportunity that came about in Colombia, when Terra Petroleos acquired Biomax, the second largest petroleum distributor company in Colombia and registered in the Colombian stock market. Grupo Terra bought the majority and every years from then until 2018 she has guided the company to acquire more share participation through OPA’S, public offering stock and including the authorisation process in the regulatory government institution which she has been directly involved. Moving forward to 2015, she was supported the acquisitions of operations of Citibank in El Salvador, once again involved in the due diligence phase and in the anti-trust filing, as one of the companies under her legal supervision was included as main shareholder in the transaction. Throughout the past 20 years of professional experience she has shaped her career in a very ‘positive and challenging way’, becoming a lawyer with strong negotiation skills with regional knowledge of the legal system and the combined ability to construct a strong and knowledgeable in-house legal department in Central America with the help and support of reputable law firms who she has constructed a strong professional relationship based on trust and expertise. Maldonado has displayed tremendous responsibility and work spirit, to ensure that her legal team is seen as an asset within the company, who anticipate the risks and solve complex problems. Adding to this, she says: ‘my aim is to take my profession to the next level, to be a true business lawyer which facilitates business under strong ethics and legal compliance. And finally to create a strong network of professionals and law firms which abide by our same spirit of high level service, creativity and ethics’. Maldonado’s other major responsibilities include being director of the boards of all holding companies of Terra Petroleos and other Grupo Terra companies, member of the Ethics Committee and member of the Committee of Government and Regulatory Affairs of Grupo Terra.