A constituent of the MERVAL Index as well as being listed in Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies, Banco Galicia is one of the premier financial institutions in the Argentine economy and encounters a number of legal hurdles to navigate in its several lines of banking and financial products. Steering the company through these obstacles in a business-friendly and commercially-minded way is a legal team led by the Bank’s most senior lawyer and general counsel Gonzalo Braceras, an inclusion in the GC Powerlist: Argentina 2017. He describes his team of 30 including 24 lawyers as professionals that ‘contribute to the company’s achievement of its goals while, at the same time, framing its initiatives to current laws and regulations’, and is organised in a structure that is composed of different sub-teams that deal with specific legal areas led by ‘leading counsel’ all directly reporting to Braceras. Despite the specialist advice the team dispenses, it has a comprehensive remit including wholesale banking and retail matters as well as commercial and labour cases. In addition, the team also ‘performs the secretary and the back office roles’. Speaking to the changes made to the department during this time, Braceras notes a re-design of internal processes that have reflected a shift in focus. To this end the team is now changing towards a model of ‘first hand advice to the branch network as opposed to the old model, by which all lawyers would take care of that task.

The same group would also address all consumer claims (except those connected to litigation) building a robust scorecard with data from our performance’. This innovative and wide-ranging perspective has been central to the team’s success and has lent itself to a number of recent accomplishments. These include ‘reducing the potential impact to the balance sheet of the bank, and helping in the organisational restructure of Grupo Financiero Galicia and its subsidiaries.’