The March 2017 sale of Citi’s consumer business in Argentina had a big impact on the company’s legal team in the country. Explaining the effect of the function’s reduction in size from 13 members to six lawyers, country general counsel for Citibank Argentina Nicolás Pertiné says, ‘Because it is a small team now, all five lawyers report directly to me. It did not make sense to structure different lines of report in such a small team. Out of the five people that report to me, four are fully dedicated to providing legal advice to the corporate business (institutional clients group), two of them are seniors and two other semi-seniors’. He also names senior legal counsel Carlos Vassallo and Alejandra Attar Cohen as providing legal advice to the corporate business and being key individuals within the team, since they support businesses with high profile transactions and business leaders. Pertiné had the following to say on the challenges that the sale of Citi’s consumer business posed: ‘It was a big transaction. Approximately 2,000 employees were transferred to the buyer, 70 branches around the country, clients, assets, liabilities, etc. Since Citi Argentina is registered as a branch of a foreign entity, it did not involve a transfer of shares.

Consequently, we had to “separate” the business that was being sold to be able to transfer it to the buyer. The transaction lasted a bit more than a year, and required analysis of many different and complex legal aspects. However, the most challenging feature was the management of people throughout the process. Many employees that were being transferred had to work on the M&A transaction, and all of the people impacted by the sale had to keep doing their work to maintain the business -and its value- until closing. Leading teams in such a context was challenging, but people showed their professionalism and commitment to Citi until the very last minute of the deal’. A further achievement of the Citi legal team in Argentina was its work on the transaction entered into with the Central Bank of Argentina in 2016, an important and sophisticated transaction in which Citi participated with an important ticket of US$500m. Espousing the virtues of all talented legal teams, Pertiné says, ‘internal legal departments can add great value to the business. Their knowledge of the company and the business that it performs, as well as its needs and risks, put legal teams in a privileged situation to provide qualified legal services that the company appreciates, values and demands’.