About

Cemex, the top cement and ready-mix concrete manufacturer in Mexico, provides high-quality products and reliable services to customers and communities across the country. As a cement distributor accounting for more than 60% of Mexico’s demand, Cemex has a strong brand identity and an extensive distribution network within the market, which the legal team have helped secure and solidify. The team has been instrumental to the acquisitions that have seen Cemex grow into a truly international company – now distributing its products to more than 50 countries. The transactions also helped Cemex move from a family-orientated business to a public entity that is registered on both the New York and Mexican Stock Exchanges, a period in which the legal team was incredibly important. The team has also assisted Cemex with matters relating to the management of some critical registered trademarks for Mexico’s largest cement brands such as Cemento Monterrey, Cemento Tolteca, and Cemento Anáhuac. Led by Ramiro Villarreal, executive vice president, legal and secretary to the board, the team has designed the corporate and capital structure of the company, instituting a strong corporate compliance area, implementing policies concerning anti-trust, securities, anti-bribery and conflict of interest. The legal team is made of 30 members, and divided in corporate divisions headed by Villarreal directly and country lawyers that manage day to day cases and local transactions who report to him indirectly. Describing the changes to the legal department during his time at Cemex, Villarreal says ‘we divided the functions of the department such as to create a specialisation in areas that require certain expertise, we incorporated new technological systems to digitally control our files, the reporting, fees paid to outside counsel and the management of the shareholders meetings’. The legal team have gone on to instituting a very strong corporate compliance area, implementing policies in anti-trust, securities, anti-bribery and conflict of interests, on this Villarreal says, ‘we have designed the capital structure of the company that notwithstanding being a true public company the stability of management is preserved’. The team continue to assist in significant acquisitions, developing the corporate governance structure to make the company ‘more transparent, objective in its addresses with investors and compliant as well as strengthening the composition of the board of directors’.