About

Martin Espinosa was ‘born and raised,’ as he says, at Philip Morris International (PMI) having been with the company for 12 years, occupying different positions, starting as an intern in the law department and progressing up to his current position of leading the department for the Andean cluster since May 2017. Previously he occupied a regional position at the headquarters in New York City, spent almost two years working in Canada for Rothmans Benson and Hedges, an affiliate of PMI, and six years in charge of the law department for Ecuador and Peru. Espinosa is now in charge of Coltabaco a PMI affiliate in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and has eight lawyers working in his team with two based in Ecuador, two in Venezuela and four in Colombia. The team manages several types of transactions and litigations covering a wide range of topics that include labour matters, tax matters and consumer protection always with the aim of preventing litigation. He and his team were involved in the launch of “IQOS” and “HEETS,” which are novel products in the tobacco industry. IQOS is an electronic device designed to heat tobacco instead of burning it. Whilst HEETS, also known as “Heatsticks,” are specially designed tobacco rods to be used with IQOS. Espinosa identified that current Colombian tobacco legislation was designed with cigarettes in mind, and as such, regulations, consumer protection, tax law and other legal matters have been a challenge to navigate in order to commercialise this new category of products. Espinosa with his multi-jurisdictional, and civil and common law backgrounds, has been crucial in this process, and in changing the image of the legal department internally making it more commercially focused. On this subject, he says that ‘a common mistake for lawyers is to spend most of the day working on contracts that make no difference on the business. Three or four years ago 70% of [his team’s] time was spent on contracts, while today this number won`t reach 20%. Today, clients have online templates for agreements, which has helped speed up the process. In addition, taking advantage of the technology today, most of the training is conducted online allowing employees to manage their time better and releasing time for the law department to devote to other tasks’. This is all part of Espinosa’s strategic objective to implement a ‘lean start-up methodology’ in the legal department and continue to dynamically transform and technologically innovate PMI’s operations in Latin America.