team size 3 members (including myself)

What are the most significant cases, projects, or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

This year has been dominated by dispute resolution and structuring across our real estate, hospitality and marina operations.

The biggest matter was the closing phase of an ICC arbitration concerning a terminated purchase contract for a resort unit. Following a final award largely favourable to the company, we led the post-award phase under the ICC Rules, identifying and correcting a miscited procedural article and reconciling inconsistent dates and figures across the award.

We are also handling a post-closing contractual dispute over payment terms, in which the parties disagree on whether a condition has been satisfied. We are pursuing the legal argument and the negotiation on separate tracks simultaneously.

On the transactional side, our work includes consolidating marina concessions with the federal port authority, restructuring multi-party debt through payment-in-kind arrangements, and defending a trial victory on appeal.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Resilience in a crisis comes down to discipline in relation to roles and the record, rather than instinct. I maintain a clear distinction between identifying legal risks and making business decisions. A crisis memorandum sets out the exposure, the available options and the relevant deadline, and stops there. The business makes the decision. This discipline is what keeps the legal function credible when decisions are reviewed after the fact.

I also do not manage a crisis based on other people’s summaries. I go back to the primary source myself—the actual statute, ruling or contractual clause—every time. It may take longer, but this year alone that approach has helped identify errors that could otherwise have put our strategy on the wrong footing.

Furthermore, because the group’s entities share properties, financing arrangements and counterparties, I treat cross-entity exposure as a single matter rather than as a series of separate files. A regulatory or contractual issue affecting one company is rarely isolated. Resilience means recognising that interconnected exposure before it emerges elsewhere, not after the fact.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Judgement, above all. It is essential to know when something is genuinely a legal risk and when it is a business decision being presented as a legal issue.

The ability to work across different areas of law is also important. A single transaction can involve tax, corporate structures and maritime concessions simultaneously. Referring every aspect to a different specialist can cost time and cause risks at the intersections between those areas to be overlooked.

I also place considerable value on verification. It is tempting to rely on a summary or someone else’s citation, especially under tight deadlines. Going back to the actual statute or award yourself may be tedious, but it helps identify genuine errors before they influence strategy.

Finally, integrity under pressure is essential: resisting the temptation to present a more favourable account than the facts support, while being transparent internally about the actual exposure. That is worth more than winning the optics of a single letter.

We are currently living through a time of geopolitical change, and the world order that we have come to take for granted for many years is being rewritten. Does this affect your company’s risk profile and, if so, what are you doing to mitigate this?

Yes, directly. We are a resort and marina developer whose buyer base is predominantly foreign, mostly US residents, and whose growth depends on foreign capital and foreign investment approvals. When the rules governing who can invest, own or operate change, or when the broader relationship between Mexico and its trading partners becomes strained, the risk is no longer abstract. It affects financing conditions, investment authorisation timelines and the confidence of foreign buyers considering purchasing property in Mexico.

In practical terms, this year alone we have had to address a new presidential decree changing investment authorisation mechanisms, as well as foreign investment restrictions governing who may legally hold or operate maritime concessions. The latter also involves a significant gap in the definition of “change of control”, which becomes particularly relevant when ownership structures grow more complex in an uncertain environment.

My approach is not to predict where geopolitics will lead. Instead, I focus on ensuring that our contracts and structures do not assume that today’s rules or circumstances are permanent. This means reviewing new regulations as soon as they are published rather than waiting for a summary, incorporating meaningful conditions and exit mechanisms into financing and investment documents instead of relying on boilerplate provisions, and maintaining internal transparency about which of our positions depend on a status quo that could change.