María Mercedes Olano is the current head of legal department for BTM’s Buenos Aires branch, and leads a team that is compact, dynamic and extremely well integrated into the Japanese multinational’s wider business structure. Olano works alongside legal analyst Pamela Higgins in reporting to BTM’s headquarters in New York as well as the bank’s head office in Tokyo, and the team is charged with providing comprehensive legal support for all activities related to the Argentine branch of the bank.

Collaborative and engaged with its business colleagues, Olano states the team takes a ‘general view of the branch’s strategy, focused on the business plan [and] trying to align my role within this context’. This is achieved via a number of methods of support, including the provision of ‘training to other departments of the branch, for explaining to them the purpose of certain regulations to resolve doubts and clear up any comments’. The BTM team is also given responsibility for project leadership: ‘I lead certain projects with proactive attitude working multidisciplinary environment in an integrated way, [working] very closely with the head office based in Tokyo and the American headquarters based in New York on the implementation of global policies and procedures’. The aforementioned Pamela Higgins is described as an attorney with ‘several highly valued skills which help in providing accurate responses to internal clients, advice on a daily basis to departments… and interacting fluently with other professionals explaining local regulations and requirements’.

Widely praised for its efforts, one nominating source said of the team: ‘The team has helped the local legal presence of the biggest Japanese bank in some very high profile transactions in Argentina, including foreign trade, acquisitions and dispositions. And these transactions not only involve complex issues of local law, but in many cases have required the application of very sophisticated concepts of New York law. Olano’s grasp of these issues is impressive’.