About

Managing the legal matters of a beverages company with operations across seven countries – Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru – is no small task, and one that requires a coherent and capable legal team that is also able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. As evident from the extensive praise it has received across the industry, CCU’s formidable legal department possesses all of these characteristics. Besides an approach to aligning itself with the business and the unrivalled skills and expertise of individual lawyers, the team possesses, according to nominators, ‘excellent adaptability’ that is rarely seen in the sector. Having an unrelenting drive to be seen as more than just a support function, the team’s impact can be seen in many events that have positively aff ected CCU’s performance. This includes both supporting regional M&A transactions that have contributed to the company’s strategic objectives and successfully renegotiating credit facilities after covenants within them had been broken. Led by general counsel Felipe Benavides, an experienced lawyer with a lengthy history of working in the food and beverages industry, the 17-strong function has seen an increase in responsibilities in the last several years, and now manages legal matters for the company’s overseas subsidiaries. In his now over three-year tenure at the company, Benavides has restructured the whole legal department there by creating a real estate legal team, a labour legal team, and reinforcing the corporate legal management. As a result of these important changes, the team is now aligned with corporate headquarters more closely than ever and is able to provide even broader support to the company.