About

Beginning her current role in October 2012, Arabella Gonzales Netto has since gained a number of important responsibilities, worked on multiple vital transactions and has become a reliable and commercially-focused counsel who is indispensable for the consolidated economic group Grupo Wiese’s business operation. The aforementioned transactions include the restructuring of the group, important M&A deals, and assuming the representation of the companies of the group with stocks listed on the Stock Exchange of Lima. These achievements have come at a time of change within the company, including the company’s CEO role changing hands in 2016 and a consequent new strategy and structure for the firm. Gonzales actively participated in the development and implementation of these plans, including the sale of Seguros Sura e Hipotecaria Sura, jointly with Grupo Sura, to Intercorp Group, which she states was ‘one of Peru’s main economic transactions of 2017 and one that required almost a year of development of strategy, negotiation and implementation’. Further proving her worth in the company’s growing business portfolio, she was critical to the acquisition of a minority stock of holding culinary company Civitano, the acquisition of ordinary shares in the seed financing round of the Peruvian startup, Juntoz.com and a joint investment agreement in a new company constituted together with Frialsa Group Mexico, a transaction that ‘took over three years to complete’. For Grupo Wiese, 2017 was ‘the year of redefinition of the group strategy and structure’, and Gonzales held a ‘main role’ in several aspects of this change. She was central to a number of initiatives, including ‘the review of a more efficient structure of the holding companies for future exit transactions, the structuration and constitution of the private equity fund to consolidate all new investments of the group, the transfer of all the staff and operations of the group’. Gonzales also assisted with the ‘constitution and stock market listing of four new holding companies of the group, [gave] advice and participation in the projects of risk management, the formalisation of procedures, manuals and politics, [and] the implementation of a compliance system and adjustment of the company to standards of best practices’. A nominating source had the following to say of Gonzales’s attributes: ‘During this challenging year, [Gonzales] has shown a lot of hard and soft skills to manage in excellent manner all the internal and external challenges for her firm’.