General counsel, Chile, Peru and headquarters Latin America | Groupon Latam and Peixe Urbano
Pablo Andrés Pacheco Escalona
General counsel, Chile, Peru and headquarters Latin America | Groupon Latam and Peixe Urbano
Since joining e-commerce company Groupon Latam in July 2016, Pablo Andrés Pacheco Escalona has played a key role on the company’s recent landmark activities. When the company was acquired by the Mountain Nazca Latin American fund in 2017, he and other lawyers in the Latin American team were in charge of leading the transition of operations to adjust them to the criteria and expectations of the new owners. Regarding this deal, he says that, ‘the deep restructuring processes of the workforce, as well as the operational and commercial modifications, implied a strong incentive to further professionalise internal management, requiring a strong preparation and constant study to give on-time resolutions to the internal consultations, negotiations with external suppliers and back office solutions’. Following this Pacheco helped facilitate the further acquisitions by Mountain Nazca of Peixe Urbano, Menu Express and Motopartner in addition to providing advice for the creation, constitution and operation of Pipol Pay, a new mobile app that allows users to easily make and collect payments. Commenting on the company’s prolific activity since joining Groupon and the opportunities it has given him to develop his role, Pacheco has the following to share: ‘The company has taken on a series of challenges, expanding its local and foreign operations, and merging its operations in Latin America with various companies, including Peixe Urbano, Brazil’s largest e-commerce service. These changes have generated opportunities for growth and intervention in local and foreign operations as legal counsel, which have led to [me assuming the position of] general counsel for the company’s operations in Chile, Peru, and as a direct counsel for the headquarters of the joint operations of Groupon Latam and Peixe Urbano from quarter two of 2018’. He adds that being substitute legal director for most of 2018 for the company’s legal operations in Latin America and general counsel for legal matters of the company in Peru were hugely influential moments in his career. Of the latter he comments that, ‘working in conjunction with the commercial, administrative and human resources teams, as well as external legal offices that perform legal representation in some judicial proceedings, has allowed me to broaden the local vision, and more efficiently understand the interaction of the company, in its different business verticals, in an interconnected way with the Latin American subsidiaries’. In 2018 Pacheco also led a series of adjustments and changes related to the way in which the e-commerce of the company is related to customers, the way in which it solves their problems, and to demonstrate how an efficient resolution of conflicts avoids unnecessary judicialisation of operational failures. He also led projects that changed and improved the commercial contracts with suppliers throughout Latin America, established conflict resolution criteria that applies in all the company’s subsidiaries in all countries, and has managed to adjust the administration to be efficient from the point of view of the legal team and in the operative aspects of the company. He also worked in tandem with the operations management to develop the model of the marketplace that the company currently executes throughout Latin America, as well as the contractual model that regulates relations with suppliers in each of the countries in which the company operates. Having been extremely prolific and successful in the last few years, it is no wonder that Pacheco comes highly recommended as a top-performing in-house counsel in Chile. He is committed to professional self-development having concluded a specialised diploma in contractual, civil and commercial matters at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 2016, before following it up with another specislised diploma concerning consumer rights in 2018 at Diego Portales University, gaining a special distinction for his academic performance.