About

Alfredo Apestegui is currently chief legal officer for Mesoamerica, a leading firm in private equity investments in Latin America. He currently leads all legal, tax and compliance matters involving the firm’s private equity investment vehicles, and the portfolio companies that they manage, mainly in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Central America. His role also encompasses deal negotiation, transaction structuring, and closing of M&A transactions and managing external legal and tax advisors in each jurisdiction. When Apestegui joined the company two years ago, Mesoamerica was undergoing a transition from a firm engaged partially in private equity and partially in M&A advisory to one involved in private equity fulltime. He joined as its first in-house counsel and was heavily involved in building the structure, policies and procedures of the legal department as well as aligning with the right external advisors to elevate Mesoamerica to its next stage. This was, he says, hugely beneficial in allowing him to challenge orthodoxies: ‘Starting in this position two years ago, there had never been an in-house counsel. This challenged me to structure my role from a clean slate, and I strived to do so in a way where I could add significant value to this firm’. As part of this exercise in rethinking the legal team, he made it his priority to ensure that top legal talent is embedded in each of Mesoamerica’s portfolio companies: ‘We believe that this combination provides great results because we get the industry knowledge from top in-house counsel, and expertise in different areas of law from external counsel. This allows me to focus on the areas that matter the most and that add greater value to our firm and our investors’. Apestegui has previously worked in New York and Miami as senior tax counsel and head of tax strategy for the Latin America and Caribbean region at AIG and says this multijurisdictional experience has taught him to ‘never assume that an issue is resolved in a particular way just because it was resolved that way in the previous five jurisdictions you’ve looked at’. He says that the next most valuable proponent is having ‘the best local counsel’ on your side. ‘You need someone who can answer your questions – more importantly, who can anticipate your questions – and who can provide answers with a high degree of technical skill and business or commercial sense’.