About

Carlos Laguado’s, reputation as a global leader in financial legal management started at Grupo Bolívar, a Latin American financial conglomerate active in banking, insurance, stock brokerage and real estate. As legal manager for corporate affairs he structured Bolivar’s M&A’s boosting the Group’s strategy, and profitability from the internal corporate conglomerate structure. Then, in 2010 he became general counsel and compliance officer for GMF Colombia, dealing with wholesale and retail auto finance and capital markets in Colombia. Afterwards, he became responsible for additional markets in Latin America like Chile and Peru. In 2017, his responsibilities were broadened again to supervise the global legal aspects of compliance for the international operations of GMF for Europe, Latin America and China. In late 2017, upon the sale of GMF’s operations in Europe to Peugeot, he was no longer responsible for Europe and instead became accountable for all the legal issues connected to the entry of GMF to Australia, where GMF is incorporating a new entity subject to credit regulations. At present, he maintains oversight of compliance related matters to the international operations in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China and Australia. His responsibilities include providing legal advice for global contracts and data privacy issues, application of the laws and regulations on anti-money laundering, anti-corruption and anti-trust amongst others. Using his professional experience Laguado gives lectures at universities in Latin America, teaching about corporate finance, corporate law and the art of being an in-house counsel. Speaking about his challenges, Laguado says that, ‘synchronising a global team of lawyers and swimming across innumerable compliance regulations, regulators, and cultures is still teaching me how to become a true global legal leader… Changes in staff and strategy vary according to the operation, jurisdiction, momentum and business needs’. He goes on to say that the financial business of GMF allowed him to navigate across insolvency proceedings in various Latin American countries, such as Chile, Peru and Colombia, testing the efficiency of the country bankruptcy courts, execution proceedings and the effectiveness of the security interest regimes across Latin America. With aggregate exposures above US$200m these cases allowed him to broaden his capacities and knowledge to successfully build secured transactions and negotiate with various creditors such as employees, financiers and stockholders, in the search of collecting loans or fairly reducing losses. Among other notable successes across his geographical remit, in 2018 Laguado led the structured issuance of medium term bonds in the Colombian Capital Market, with a non-traditional parent guarantee subject to New York law. Although the issuance is to be placed in Colombia and was approved by the Colombian securities regulator, the state-of-the-art back-to-back parent guarantee granted by GMF Company Inc. posed important legal complexities to the successful and innovative deal.