What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Since 2020, when I became legal manager at Anglo American in Peru, my team focused on a single objective: moving forward with Quellaveco—a mining project worth more than $5.5bn, which is the most important foreign investment in Peru today. The last two years have been quite tough for all mining activity in the country. Covid-19 has brought many challenges that demanded an optimum degree of resilience, not only in the sense of adapting to a new working environment but also to plan more efficiently for the workforce to deliver in a timely manner. The legal team’s work has been decisive in achieving the objectives for the Quellaveco Project, making it the country’s first digital mine, with state-of-the-art technology that seeks to lay the foundations for the future professionals of the new mining industry.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

Covid-19 has perhaps accelerated the trend that was already expected to become a reality soon: flexible work, a more balanced work scheme, and more focus on people’s well-being, providing them with a level of quality of life that is positively linked to their production.

What are some of the key developments – legal, geopolitical or otherwise – that have affected your business over the past year?

The current social and political situation of the country has been tricky in recent years. In order to attract investments to the country, we must be competitive and stable. Continuous threats of alteration of the legal order, as well as the increasingly conflictive social scenario against mining activity, affects the security and stability of investments. It is necessary for the current government to define its vision for long-term mining activity and not to continue with a ‘double discourse’, balanced between investment promotion and state intervention, which certainly contributes to increasing uncertainty.

A major challenge is how to ensure that the communities in the areas of mining influence know where to direct their claims and do not attribute their lack of development opportunities to the mining impact. On the contrary, the state should guide and promote stable and formal policies aimed at directing state revenues from mining activity towards the tangible implementation of infrastructure, including allocating part of state revenues to equalise health, security and education conditions. And lastly, strengthening environmental controls for any productive activity, with special emphasis on informal activity.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

Anglo American has already implemented several centralised tools in the ‘Legal Connect’. This effort seeks to increasingly automate legal work, especially where such automation is required to optimise the lawyers’ time and value.