About

As general counsel, chief compliance officer and company secretary at Komatsu Latin America, a global mining and construction equipment company based in Japan, Francisco Vial is the head of a multinational in-house legal team providing general legal support to the Latin American and Caribbean business. He also heads the recently created compliance function for the region, establishing the general framework for internal compliance systems including code of ethics, compliance hotlines, bribery and corruption, anti-trust, and export control. ‘Being head of the legal and compliance functions in a region as vast as Latin America from a regional headquarters in Chile demands a set of skills that are not common. It requires a vision that goes beyond strict legal compliance, involving concepts such as corporate sustainability and business ethics underpinning our day-to-day duties. Lawyers in this role should have a desire to build bridges between different cultures and businesses, thereby promoting world class standards in business conduct and legal compliance’, explains Vial. His prior experience includes in-house legal positions as general counsel for Latin America at Joy Global and regional legal counsel at Orica, as well as senior associate at Morales Noguera Valdivieso & Besa in Santiago and senior consultant at EY International Tax Services in New York. Vial obtained his law degree from Universidad Diego Portales in 1994 and he has an LLM from Columbia University School of Law.