About

As vice president and general counsel of AT&T, a telecoms company with a global revenue of $146bn, George Troy Hatch has facilitated some of the industry’s biggest deals, making the company the second largest wireless carrier in Mexico. Based in Texas and leading a team of 40 lawyers and 30 other professionals, 2015 was a particularly active period for Hatch in Mexico. He coordinated the closing of AT&T’s acquisition of wireless operators Nextel México for $1.9bn and Iusacell for $2.5bn from Grupo Salinas. The latter deal was crucial to AT&T’s plans to create the first-ever North American Mobile Service area covering more than 400 million consumers and businesses in Mexico and the United States. On both deals Hatch’s work involved obtaining antitrust and regulatory clearances under newly enacted telecommunications laws in Mexico. In December 2015, Hatch coordinated the first spectrum swap transaction, with Telefónica, under the new regulatory regime in Mexico. The deal required approval from the Federal Telecommunications Institute, Mexico’s telecoms regulator. To explain his working philosophy, Hatch says ‘I believe the key to successfully advising a business is for the lawyers to be “in the trenches” with their business clients, committed to being present and using their knowledge of, and experience with, the law to support the business with the tools to accomplish its purposes in accordance with the legal and ethical standards applicable to the company. Nothing has more impact on realising the strategic vision of a company than this commitment to client interaction and support’.