About

After briefly working part-time as an assistant professor and private practice lawyer at firms Arrubla, Devis, Tamayo and Brigard & Urrutia Abogados, Juan Luis Múnera joined Bancolombia in October 1998 in his first in-house role. Working primarily on cross-border transactions for the bank, Múnera impressed with his ability to deal with international lawyers in New York and to resolve complex compliance issues. In addition, Múnera was instrumental to the bank with his work on M&A transactions with other financial institutions in Colombia. Múnera went on to join cement company Cementos Argos in 2005 and has held a number of positions within the legal department since. Múnera, who became general counsel of the company in 2012, is also responsible for the communications, audit, risk, compliance, institutional affairs and government affairs. Overseeing a team of around 15 in-house lawyers, Múnera has achieved a much closer integration of his employees with the rest of the company. Part of his contributions, says Múnera, has been to ensure ‘the company lawyers are taken into account from the initial stages of transactions. We have a very close and fluent relationship with the different areas of the company now, which allows us to better understand the needs of the business and make the best possible decisions in a timely fashion’. At the onset of his career at Cementos Argos, Múnera worked on a complex merger between eight cement companies in Colombia, resulting in the company becoming the largest cement producer in the country. Over the years, Múnera has directly contributed to the growth of the company, having worked on the largest Colombian investment in the US with $2.5bn in acquisitions and having supported the company’s expansion efforts in the Caribbean, Central America and the northern part of South America.