Team size: Four

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

I have had two challenges that impacted our work during the last year:

Firstly, culminate the corporate reorganisation – simple spin-off. To have the group’s corporate structure organised by business lines. Two group companies ceased to be subsidiaries of another group company, for which purpose a vehicle (Newco) was created to report directly to the group’s corporate structure. The spin-off agreement became effective on January 1st, 2022, and during the first months of the same year the corporate reorganization had to be completed. This transaction was for assets valued at $11m.

Secondly, since the beginning of 2022 I took charge, in addition to my functions in Farmex, of the legal matters of the IF group’s social responsibility vehicle, Asociación Interfomento, whose main mission is to help education in Peru in the areas where the IF Group’s businesses are located. It has not only been important to have the knowledge for Interfomento Association to operate properly, but also to know more about the projects and places where we are helping, which is something that comforts me.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

One of the main technological advances, which has begun to be more public in the last year, is related to ChatGPT and how artificial intelligence can modify the way of seeing the legal function, both from a legal counsel and from the side of law firms. Applications, such as ChatGPT, and similar, that are on the market and will be launched, will change the way we perform our work, where our task is to see how we can incorporate it into our work, seeing what operational issues these applications can perform and focus on where we can generate more value.

Likewise, these advances will further develop the digital talent that could generate a change in existing jobs accompanied by the creation of new ones. This means that issues related to information security, risk, project management and legal processes, as well as legal knowledge management will be one of the priorities of legal counsel.

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

One of the causes that concerns me is the global economic recession that may generate not only lower sales or opportunities, but also consequences derived from it, in the sense that businesses decide to take greater risks, so it is the main function of the area to be hand in hand with the business, know it well, support and participate in decisions, in such a way that they go hand in hand with compliance and regulatory compliance.