About

Josefina Tobías is the general counsel for Latin America South region at the Dow Chemical Company, a multinational chemical corporation, and is in charge of all legal matters in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay. She also serves as the director of Dow’s Argentine subsidiaries as well as a member of the Dow South region leadership team and the regional ethics and compliance committee. Tobías is praised by her colleagues as a ‘knowledgeable, hardworking and trustworthy lawyer’, recognised for her ‘strong legal technical background along with a sharp business mind-set’. Regarding corporate strategy, she takes a preventive approach by helping the company realise the importance of planning in advance to stay ahead in an environment with rapid changes in law, technology, a deeper focus on governmental agencies, and the impact of reputational issues. ‘Training the employees is one of our important preventive tools’, she says. Tobías sets the goal of the legal team as ‘being partner with the business by thinking out of the box for new solutions’. In addition to her legal responsibilities, Tobías has set ethics and compliance as Dow’s priority by leading a multi-functional team to encourage their awareness of the concept of compliance. During the past three years, Tobías and her team have contributed substantially on Dow’s major transactions. The most notable deal is the merger of Dow and DuPont (forming DowDuPont), which is one of the most important transactions in the history of petrochemical industry. Dow is now a subsidiary of DowDuPont as a result of the merger. She also assisted with a number of other projects including the acquisition of Dow Corning, implementation of integrated services in Brazil, and the sale of its caustic soda business. The legal team worked on DowDuPont’s three spin-offs: a separation into three independent, publicly-traded companies with focus on agriculture, materials science, and specialty products respectively. Prior to joining Dow, Tobías worked as regional legal manager at GlaxoSmithKline for the consumer and pharmaceutical businesses for two years. Before moving in-house, she worked at Marval, O´Farrell & Mairal for over 13 years, where she advised companies from a variety of industries and led domestic and multi-jurisdictional transactions, including M&As, securitisations, debt restructurings, syndicated loans and bond issuances. Tobías also previously practiced at the New York office at Davis Polk & Wardwell, and holds a Masters degree from New York University (NYU).