MIRA is the world’s largest infrastructure asset manager with growing portfolios in real estate, agriculture and energy. Only a year after joining MIRA’s Mexico office in 2015, US-trained lawyer Roman Ajzen assumed the role of legal director of MMIF and FIBRA Macquarie. Since then, he has continued to work on a number of important projects across the organisation. This not only includes the acquisition and successful construction of a greenfield solar PV plant – one of the first in Mexico – but also seamlessly bringing certain key corporate secretarial and compliance functions in-house. In addition, he has overseen the implementation of a comprehensive anti-corruption due diligence process for high-risk transactions: ‘The process is based on international best practices and incorporates multi-disciplinary inputs such as forensic accounting, on-the-ground enhanced due diligence and local and international legal advisors to provide actionable advice on applicable risks and potential mitigants.

This information is critical to the decision to proceed with a transaction and the type of contractual protections included in the transaction documents and post-closing actions taken to mitigate risk further’, he explains. Describing his role, Ajzen says: ‘The in-house legal role at MIRA is quite broad and includes transaction oversight, general corporate work, regulatory and compliance responsibilities. The broad scope implies that lawyers moving from private practice necessarily must expand their practice and develop new skills’. For MMIF, Macquarie Group’s first managed fund in Latin America, Ajzen assisted on the disposal of its interests in a renewable energy project which ‘was extraordinarily complex and required expertise across M&A, project finance and general corporate work in order to execute successfully’.

For FIBRA Macquarie – a real estate investment trust targeting industrial and commercial real estate opportunities in Mexico – Ajzen helped refinance its entire balance sheet, representing US$1.1bn of debt across six credit facilities. He also worked on approximately US$80m of M&A activity in the last few years and led the refresh of its corporate governance policies. Demonstrating his qualities, one nominator said of Ajzen that he ‘is a very technical and pragmatic lawyer. He is a US lawyer working in Mexico so he brings great experience into the Mexican market and since he’s Mexican, he also knows his way in the Mexican legal market. He is just great’. Before MIRA, Ajzen spent over seven years in the New York office of law firm Davis Polk.