Team size: 25

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

For the past two years, our company has been involved in negotiating, closing, and implementing the acquisition of one of our competitors in the Telco market in Panama. It has been a journey full of challenges and learning opportunities, but most importantly a chance for us to work as a team across all areas of the business. For our legal department, working in a compliance and regulatory affairs matter provided an excellent opportunity for us to engage in a high-level transaction that ultimately impacted notions of how we do business, how the company might be structured, and how services will be provided to our customers.

In which ways have you attempted to bring the legal department closer to your business colleagues?

The legal department is there to support the company’s income generators, so the first step is establishing in the minds of our colleagues that our primary duty is to provide assistance, feedback, and solutions for their strategy implementation. The second step is to create the avenues of communication that maintain healthy and successful relationships. I am a firm believer in proactive interactions, in having conversations face-to-face instead of over email, and in providing respectful but honest feedback. I truly believe our business colleagues trust us and seek us out not just to solve their problems, but to offer respected advice.

What are some of the most significant cases and transactions you have been involved in recently?

The acquisition of Claro Panama has been the most important transaction handled by the team in the past two years. We are still implementing the merger of both businesses and navigating the antitrust remedies issued by local authorities. The ramifications of this transaction are enormous and will still represent a significant portion of the challenges we will face in the upcoming year.