Team size: Nine

What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?

For Nestlé Ecuador, 2024 was a year of significant transformation, in which structures were reorganise while actively promoting our iconic brands. As a result of this initiative, in March 2024, Nestlé reached an agreement with Grupo Gloria for the sale of its dairy and juice business in Ecuador. This included the sale of local brands, the factory and distribution center located in Cayambe, and the licensing of global brands La Lechera® and Svelty®. This transaction, was a complex process. The local Legal & Compliance (L&C) team played a crucial role in the success of this project, by establishing effective strategic and operational work frames, while protecting employees, preserving brand identity and assure the business continuity. Additionally, due to restrictive local regulation and the extended nature of the process, the L&C team was an enabler to obtain the antitrust authorisation necessary to finalise the project. This was accomplished by sharing strategic information to assure that the local dairy industry remains unaffected.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience? 

Periods of instability or crisis are the times where the legal function is highly required in safeguarding the company’s reputation while complying with local regulation and the corporate policies. To succeed in such crisis, you need 3 key ingredients: 1) be close to the internal client, understand its strategy and its business, speak its language; 2) holistic and proactive analysis, meaning understanding of the external landscape and try to be one step ahead 3) principles and technical criteria are not negotiables. An example of this can be the solid strategy created by Nestle Ecuador’s L&C team to present technical arguments against a restrictive bill that banned the free sales of Breast Milk Substitutes (BMS) products and requested a medical prescription for parents to acquire these products. A strategy focused on providing technical facts to align bill drafts to international guidelines without creating anti-technical definitions in compliance with breast-feeding protection practices. Bill was 100% veto by the President of Ecuador, avoiding significant economic impact to the business, as well as maintaining Nestlé´s reputational and technical credentials with key stakeholders.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

In-house counsels should be perceived as enabler of the business, and at the same time maintain its role of protection and guardians of compliance and ethical behavior. To achieve this, a key attribute is the ability to have a holistic view and proactive mindset, this is crucial for understanding the company´s and business needs and objectives. Another key attribute that modern in-house counsels must have, is good communication skills, as legal concepts aren´t easy to understand for non-lawyers. They should be able to communicate legal arguments in a clear and simple language, so that non-lawyers can understand the core ideas and advocate for the argument/idea that was shared, but at the same time provide creative solution to a specific problem always promoting a strong compliance culture within the organisation.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation? 

Both ESG and compliance must be embedded on the company’s DNA, for that we need to understand that Compliance is part of a company’s ESG strategy. To achieve this, companies need to develop programs that demonstrates this great partnership. For example, Nestlé Ecuador -led by the legal department- is implementing a program named “Juntos por la Integridad”, which its main purpose is to engage with youngsters (university students) and talk about -through trainings and university challenges- solutions to fight corruption in Ecuador, results have been fantastic.