About

German healthcare multinational Bayer is able to rely on the expertise of Hector A. Garcia Corredor, its head of legal, data privacy and compliance for the Andean region (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), to navigate through complex regulatory regimes in the area. Demonstrating his ability to live up to this, last year Garcia led the process to successfully obtain recognition for Bayer in Colombia as an “Anticorruption Active Company – Business with Principles” granted by the Secretary of Transparency of the Presidency of Colombia. Since being appointed to his current position in June 2015, Garcia has seamlessly achieved the goals he was initially tasked with. To this end, the regional legal department has attracted and developed talent whilst also transforming into a real business partners, as Garcia explains: ‘We are very well perceived by the business across the Andean Region because we have built relationships with the businesses based on trust and with the clear idea that we are there to support the company to do business in an ethical and compliant way with innovative solutions. Actually, the Andean Region Team is ranked number one among all the legal departments in Bayer according to the employee´s survey performed every two years’. Another achievement of his at Bayer is developing innovative local solutions such as a digital contract management tool, unique and engaging ways to train people on compliance issues and a digital, highly-interactive and user-friendly repository of information and solutions to prevent certain legal risks for the company. Over the past two years, Garcia has been leading the Monsanto acquisition by Bayer, one of the largest transactions involving a German company, in order to assure its success from a legal point of view in the Andean Region. Commenting on his role, Garcia says, ‘I have around 10 direct and four indirect reports which has helped me to develop and shape my leadership skills. Additionally, having the opportunity to be responsible for different jurisdictions is giving me a broader understanding of the business necessities, different country realities and also how we provide a more complete and accurate legal advice in each case’. Prior to moving to Colombia to take up his current role, Garcia was head of legal and compliance from 2011 onwards for Bayer in Venezuela, his home nation. Before that he spent two years at a family-owned Venezuelan pharmaceutical company to open its legal department in his first in-house role.