About

Chief counsel for the Andean, Pacific and Central American countries Juan Pablo Restrepo leads a multiregional team of five lawyers and three paralegals. Headquartered in Bogota, the team is responsible for legal, compliance and security matters in no less than 14 countries, in a market worth over US$800m for the multinational confectionery, food, and beverage company. Recently, the team has been reacting to the company’s reduction in facilities in the region, and changes in Venezuela. The team has shutdown manufacturing plants in Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua and thus has also eliminated a couple of legal positions in Colombia and Costa Rica. Likewise and due to the shrinking of the Venezuelan business due to the country’s turmoil and lack of raw materials, it has also eliminated a legal position in Caracas. The shutdown of the plants in Colombia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica were very difficult legal transactions, especially from a labour law perspective given the negotiation of the severance packages with former employees and union leaders, however the team excelled in overseeing the process from a legal standpoint. The team also divested a very big chocolate business in Costa Rica called El Gallito and shut down operations in several small countries in Central American and transferred those businesses to master distributors. This was another complex legal project due to the volume of licenses and permits and that had to be terminated and transferred to the distributor, and the negotiation with the latter due to protectionist laws in Central America which greatly favours distributors. Finally, the team obtained all US permits to open the company’s Cuban business and is working on mitigating problems caused by continuing to do business in Venezuela due to the harsh and constant changes to legislation, especially labour immobility and price control regulations. Restrepo highlights the following: ‘The legal team has thrived to support a very complex transformation of the supply chain and road to market business structure carried out during the last couple of years. Even though we have had to restructure our legal department and do more work with fewer lawyers, [the team is] being resilient to work together with a team spirit that has overcome all the difficult tasks we have had to face’.