Event Report

San Jose’s Hotel Intercontinental was the venue for the latest in The Legal 500’s series of Latin America round tables, our second in Costa Rica. Effectively a ‘working breakfast’, the event saw over 20 in-house counsel come together to discuss contemporary corporate legal issues in a Central American context.

Attendees included representatives of leading multinationals including 3M, Bayer, Cargill, Coca Cola, HP, Kraft Heinz, Siemens, Smith & Nephew, The TMF Group and Walmart, along with Latin American telcos Claro and Tigo (Millicom), Central American banking entity BAC Credomatic, and local businesses such as Dos Pinos, Grupo Garnier and energy importer and distributor Recope (considered the largest business in Central America). We were also very pleased to count on the participation of a number of state entities including the Bolsa Nacional de Valores and the Consejo Nacional de Supervisión del Sistema Financiero (CONASSIF).

Planned topics included aspects of the in-house/private practice relationship and issues regarding the recruitment, management and motivation of in-house teams. As is frequently the case with the round table format, however, the conversation ended up focusing almost exclusively on our primary subject: data privacy and cyber security – in part as a sub-set of the broader question of compliance in general. Matters such as what constitutes (& the limits of) informed consent, relations with third parties and suppliers, the importance of a rigorous analysis of the internal management of data, and the role of education and training concerning data handling were all raised in what turned into a lively -and lengthy- debate, as were concerns about the management of data by public entities and their ability to request such information from private companies.

The Legal 500 would like to thank all those who attended and contributed to the fascinating discussion, as well as our sponsors (once again): Aguilar Castillo Love.

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