About

An active participant in relevant discussion forums and public and private working committees, the legal team at Electrolux Chile is frequently at the epicentre of discussions on issues surrounding waste management, extended producer responsibility and the Recycling Promotion Act in Chile. ‘This has done a great job to mobilise the company to keep an active involvement in technical discussions and collaborative projects with other players, to plan and make the required adjustments to its operation; and to take the necessary measures for the adequate and timely compliance of this regulation, with the lowest possible operational impacts and highest efficiency,’ says legal manager Alejandra Urenda Silva, the most senior lawyer in the team. Aside from its influential role in such discussions, the team has also looked inwards, introducing valuable internal improvements. It has, for instance, restructured the company’s legal counselling approach, shifting from the traditional, reactive, and external legal advice approach to one that relies on an internal legal department. According to Urenda, such modern counselling approach requires the team to ‘show a deep knowledge of the business, be involved in decision-making, take proactive and preventive control actions of business-related risks and act like a business partner, but always remaining objective and independent’. Rolling out these internal changes involved some challenges, however, as Urenda feels that the new approach had to achieve an ‘adequate corporate positioning’, as well as the creation of an ‘internal legal culture’ whose value had to be promoted across the business. As far as external transactions are concerned, the team’s contributions has been significant over the years, most recently involving the planning and implementation of an attractive and ‘very innovative’ stock purchase offer for minority shareholders of some of the group’s companies in Chile. Urenda shares that this task involved her department working under a ‘complex scenario, with a highly atomised minority interest both in terms of shareholders and shares’ and that the project challenged the lawyers’ ‘creativity’ and their ‘team-working skills’. Two lawyers deserve special mentions, following their impeccable impressions made during this year’s research – Urenda has been credited in particular for her contributions in developing a broad, company-wide compliance policy. Francisca Arancibia Duran also impressed with her contribution to bringing the legal department closer to other corporate units, thereby raising awareness about the need to carry out joint and coordinated actions to ensure the company’s success.