The legal team at the Argentine e-commerce company MercadoLibre comprises 20 employees (18 lawyers and two non-legal employees) led by senior vice president and general counsel Jacobo Cohen Imach and Gabriela Colombo who lead the general practice team, and Humberto Chiesi Filho who leads the dispute resolutions team. Having recently undergone changes to its organisational and reporting structure, the team now has a number of corporate legal heads, each covering a specific practice area, reporting to the general counsel, as well as country legal heads who report via a dotted or solid line to these corporate legal heads.

Another recent change to the legal team has been related to its strategy, focus and strategic vision. Cohen says: ‘Our vision as in-house counsel of MercadoLibre is that we are business partners that must provide great quality legal advice delivered with common sense and in a commercial and timely manner. Our approach to work is problem solving and thinking about how something can get done’. Colombo adds: ‘We’ve also been very focused on legal operations, driving efficiency and innovation within the legal department. The team has been reviewing processes and workflows to detect opportunities for improvement and have been exploring how the use of technology can be useful in helping them to innovative, be creative and more cost effective’. Achievements from the last three years include the team’s coordination of legal work regarding the issuance of a convertible senior note of US$330m, coordination of an SEC registered secondary offering for an amount of US$1.6bn, legal structuring of various projects across Latin America and provision of support and coordination of acquisitions and post-merger integration of 13 companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico and the US.

‘I’m very proud of this team, it shows strong commitment and excellent results in a permanently changing industry, a growing company and a highly demanding environment like e-commerce and Fintech,’ Cohen says. ‘This team is recognised internally for its business awareness and approach and for always advising with business and common sense and a deep and solid legal understanding. In addition to the legal work, the team has had an active participation in several regulatory initiatives which may have impact on our businesses in the countries where we operate’.