About

Globally diversified mining business Anglo American Perú has a legal department composed of five lawyers, including a legal manager and one support staff. Legal manager Juan García Montúfar oversees the entire legal department and since his arrival in 2012, has overseen it shift from a reactive function to having a more proactive approach, focused on being one step ahead of colleagues’ needs and providing commercially viable solutions to problems at hand. ‘It is about being a trusted advisor rather than just a passive provider of legal services’, says Montúfar. In order to achieve the goal of the global legal function for Anglo American, the next phase in the transformation of the team has been to consistently add value to the business, it has proceeded to do this in several ways. ‘All members of the team have adopted a service culture and are motivated to create value for the business. The latter requires not only professional expertise, but a profound knowledge of the business, as well as close interaction with colleagues and stakeholders to become real strategic partners for them’, says Montúfar. Other ways in which the team has added value include its participation in the subscription by Mitsubishi of new shares in Anglo American Quellaveco for US$833m, for Mitsubishi to attain a 40% share of the total number of Anglo American Quellaveco shares following the issue of new shares. ‘This was an international and complex transaction, involving legal teams in the UK, Peru and Tokyo’, says Montúfar. The team went on to negotiate the EPCM contract for the construction of the Quellaveco project, requiring an international team in the US and Peru. Working closely with Montúfar, Rafael Melgarejo provides support to the legal manager in the management of the legal department and has played an instrumental role in applying the various initiatives of the global legal function in Peru. Other significant members include Luis Berrocal, who has assisted with the various phases of the US$5bn Quellaveco project, whose knowledge on the projects’ complexities and challenges, coupled with his legal skills, allows him to play a key role in its successful development. The team prides itself for being a value accretive team and a strategic partner to business colleagues: ‘Our objective is to be more than the lawyers who provides legal advice, we want to understand the issues that lie behind the questions, think about the different alternatives, discuss them with our colleagues and together determine a path forward in which all are aware of the benefits and risks involved’, says Montúfar.