Nicolas Rubio – GC Powerlist
GC Powerlist Logo
Colombia 2016

Nicolas Rubio

General Counsel | Cerro Matoso / South 32 Mining

Download

Colombia 2016

legal500.com/gc-powerlist/

Recommended Individual

Nicolas Rubio

General Counsel | Cerro Matoso / South 32 Mining

Nicolás Rubio - Latin America 2014

General counsel | Cerro Matoso (BHP Billiton)

Formerly VP-Legal for REFICAR (at that time, a Glencore-Ecopetrol joint venture), Nicolás Rubio became general counsel of BHP Billiton’s Colombian ferronickel operation, Cerro Matoso, in 2010. In late 2012 he...

View Powerlist

About

General counsel of Cerro Matoso, a large Colombian ferronickel mine owned by South 32 Mining (formerly BHP Billiton), Nicolas Rubio has made a significant impact on the legal function during his six and a half years in the role. He has made the legal department an integral part of senior management of the company whilst simultaneously achieving a degree independence, allowing Rubio to provide ‘proactive’, rather than ‘reactive’ advice. Rubio also integrated the Colombian legal department into the group’s legal department, thus making it part of a worldwide group of lawyers with a global vision of the issues at hand. On a more practical side, Rubio has implemented the anticorruption policies of former owners BHP Billiton into Cerro Matoso, has standardised contracts and has implemented a strict cost control of external advisers using fixed fees and periodical reviews of timesheets. Apart from these operational improvements, Rubio has completed the renegotiation with the Colombian government of the mining lease under which Cerro Matoso operates, without which the operation would have stopped immediately within a year and international litigation would have ensued. This allowed the company to focus on the operation with legal stability until at least 2029, and possibly 2044. This renegotiated contact has become a standard for the renegotiation of large-scale mining contracts in Colombia.

Related Powerlists

Nicolás Rubio

General counsel

Cerro Matoso (BHP Billiton)

View Powerlist