About

Heading a team of 14, Duncan Grob Urzúa manages the legal affairs for Parque Arauco. With 31 shopping malls spread across Chile, Colombia and Peru the company is one of Chile’s largest shopping mall chains. Now a distinguished figure for his specialised skills in corporate and trade law, M&A, capital markets and financing Grob has been honing his expertise at Parque Arauco since originally joining in 2011 as head of corporate legal. After a brief return to private practice between 2013 and 2015, he returned to Parque Arauco to his current position as corporate legal manager in 2015. During the period of his connection with the company, Parque Arauco has doubled its gross leasable area and therefore significantly increased its revenues. Grob also identifies ‘strong development through greenfield projects and M&A, with more than 500,000m2’ since he originally joined the company, as a significant career highlight. This along with the issuance of a bond by Parque Arauco in Chile – as it had the lowest rate obtained for corporate emissions company excluding regulated and state entities – have been some of Grob’s key impacts on the company, which he achieved through a joint effort between the finance and legal teams. In terms of changing the legal department during his time at Parque Arauco, Grob says, ‘our main concern has been to build a successful growth path and identify the critical processes in our business in order to minimise the risk associated to those processes… I believe our work in improving the corporate governance of the company has been important. The changes imply that our workers are more aware of the company risks and they are more capable to deal with them’.