About

Karin Herman Zachrisson joined Citi in 1997 as legal counsel for Guatemala and since then she has held various senior positions in Guatemala and in the regional office for Citi Latin America in Miami, Florida in both the compliance and legal functions. After working abroad with Citi, she returned to Guatemala to the law firm Consortium- Rodríguez, Archila, Castellanos, Solares & Aguilar responsible for their banking and finance practice. She re-joined Citi in 2007 as director of compliance and anti-money laundering for the Caribbean and Central America region where she led the implementation and integration of the compliance and anti-money laundering functions in the newly acquired Grupo Uno and Grupo Cuscatlan bank in Central America. Thanks to her excellent track record, in 2010 she assumed responsibilities for the entire legal function where she remains to date. On her career journey at the multinational investment bank, she explains: ‘my career at Citi has been that of continuous learning, development and change. Citi is a company that allows you to grow and develop in different fields and it gave me the opportunity early in my career to work at the Latin America regional office. I was able to work with great mentors and role models from several areas and countries, allowing me to learn from the best’. As general counsel, she has also had the opportunity to lead many ground-breaking transactions in the Guatemalan markets, including in 2004, when she oversaw international private placement of a Guatemalan company, then two privatisation processes, which included the monopoly of the telephone company and power distribution companies, and two Eurobond issues for the Republic of Guatemala, among others. She was also involved in the integration process of the business into the Citi structure, which implied taking 16 banking licenses in seven jurisdictions and more than 70 companies and turning them into a streamlined banking organisation. ‘All of these experiences at Citi have given me the tools to become a trusted advisor to my peers, not merely a legal expert and I think that is what my peers have come to expect of their counsel’, says Herman. Over the past three years Citi has gone through a transformation of its business model in Latin America, in alignment with global guidelines, during 2016 Citi sold its consumer business in Central America and in Guatemala. According to Herman, this divesture proved to be one of the most ‘complex and interesting’, transactions to lead as it implied the separation of the consumer and the corporate businesses into two banks with separate banking licenses, as well as the redesign of the financial group and the requisite regulatory approvals that the new sale and new business model required. ‘This process closed the cycle that started in 2007 when we acquired two banks in Central America and merged the operations with those that Citi had in the region at that time, which has been a unique experience’, she adds.