About

Andrés Miranda Curia started at Mainstream Renewable Power Chile as head of legal services, Chile and since December 2018 he has assumed the position as head of both legal and commercial for Latin America. ‘Mainstream has furnished me with a great opportunity to be part of a multidisciplinary team that since 2016 has been putting together a platform of ten renewable projects (seven wind, three photovoltaic) that must be developed, financed, and built simultaneously’, says Curia. He has been consistently working to successfully obtaining 175 PPA’s with distribution companies, 16 banks, and numerous government agencies for environmental approval amongst other regulatory and legal challenges. ‘It’s the largest renewable portfolio in Latin America which is a task in itself for a small company. This calls for strategy, innovation and a team effort’, says Curia. In these positions, Curia has maintained the mind-set of always seeing the legal department both as a service provider and as a core business unit. ‘This means that we lawyers must see other departments as clients, and as such, we should always provide answers and alternatives to the tasks put by them in front of us. That ethos shapes the legal teamwork and made the department a core unit, a group of lawyers able to cope with different problems, namely strategy and negotiation, for the benefit of the wider group. This meant that I had to recruit different profiles and make timely changes accordingly’, adds Curia. Prior to this role he was Pacific Hydro Chile’s legal manager and from 2011 to 2013 he worked as a corporate lawyer for CGE. During this time he had the chance to develop Punta Sierra Wind farm in northern Chile, facing all regulatory changes to the electricity law, together with years of mining and land litigation from speculators against the project. Prior to going in-house, Curia spent eight years in private practice, focusing on commercial dealings and civil litigation. Across his professional experience he also had the chance to take on extracurricular studies; he now holds a postgraduate certificate of economics, achieved in 2005 from the University of Chile and an LLM in international commercial law in 2009 from King’s College London. ‘Andrés Curia of Mainstream has extraordinary experience in project development, an accurate strategic mind [and gives] solid and trustable advice’, states a nominator.