About

Leandro Miana Telles is the head of legal for investment banking at Banco Itaú BBA, the corporate investment arm of Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco group, one of the leading banks in Latin America and the largest financial conglomerate in the Southern Hemisphere. Counselling the most active investment bank in Brazil, Telles has proven his effectiveness and utility, and can point to several achievements including groundbreaking deals like the exchange tender offer of LAN and TAM Airlines for €3.2bn, the re-IPO of Telefônica Brazil and helping develop new regulations in conjunction with the Brazilian stock exchange and regulatory authority ANBIMA. Having started his career within Unibanco’s legal department in 2004, Telles has amassed a wealth of experience across several departments since his first appointment as a junior lawyer. Quickly rising through the ranks and achieving several promotions, as well as a spending a stint as an international associate at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York as part of Unibanco’s manager training program, Telles came back to Brazil in 2009 to take charge of the capital markets divison of Unibanco. After the groundbreaking merger between Unibanco with Itaú in 2010, Telles took responsiblity for legal support to the investment banking division of Itaú, overseeing not only capital markets transactions but also M&A advisory for clients. Recently adding to his responsibilities, the bank has relied on Telles to assume responsibility for the legal teams supporting brokerage activities, project finance and a new division called “Special Situations”, whose main focus is on restructuring current credit transactions with clients. Taking the position of a ‘dealmaker and gatekeeper, protecting company interests from legal, regulatory and government affairs challenges seamlessly’, Telles puts emphasis on finding ‘creative ways’ to solve new issues in the legal minefield of Brazilian banking.