About

A prime example of how in-house lawyers can transition into roles requiring more than a purely legal skillset and in a range of different industries, José Ignacio Merino is currently the external affairs manager for tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) in Chile. His in-house career began almost 15 years ago in 2005, when he was senior lawyer and compliance officer at Dutch insurer ING, where he implemented the compliance area in Chile as well as defined the legal risk control framework to export financial services from Chile to Peru, Colombia and Argentina. After his five year stay at ING, Merino joined the Chilean Copper Commission in 2010 as its general counsel and head of compliance. Whilst there and serving during President Piñera’s first term, Merino negotiated on behalf of the Chilean copper industry to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations body, for a deal which avoided increases of as much of 10% in the cost of producing copper due to environmental regulations. He identifies representing the interests of the industry in this way as a personal career highlight. His next job as head of legal compliance at Energia Andina, a joint venture for geothermal opportunities, he negotiated and closed a 30-year contract to guarantee green energy projects worth more than US$100m and presented a plan to develop 500 MW in geothermal energy concessions to the Ministry of Energy with an 18 month period. Whilst serving as regional director for ethics and compliance between 2014 and 2018 at Abbott, covering Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, Merino demonstrated his wider skills, joining the healthcare giant after it acquired CFR-Recalcine, a pharmaceutical company with operations in Latin America and Vietnam, in order to lead a process of implementing US regulation in CFR-Recalcine without affecting business profitability. ‘I achieved 100% of compliance with US regulations within the next 60 days right after the CFR-Recalcine Latin America deal was closed, which included managing a 2,500 employee training in 45 days. I also ensured that no fines were imposed on Abbott after the CFR-Recalcine acquisition for non-compliance with key US regulations’, he explains. In 2018, Merino joined PMI to lead its dramatic transformation in Chile which involves replacing cigarettes with novel risk reduced products and smoke-free products whilst managing a process to stop selling cigarettes in Chile. ‘This is already happening in 43 markets in the globe and Chile may be the next one’ he says. Merino’s diversified skillset and willingness to adapt suggests that PMI in Chile will continue to benefit from his expertise as it embarks on this next phase of its history.