About

SBA Communications is an owner and operator of wireless infrastructure for communication companies in Latin America, with the exception of Brazil. The legal division currently has a corporate counsel representative in each of the Central American countries the company operates in including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. In total, the Central America legal team is comprised of 15 lawyers, one paralegal, and two administrative assistants who all seek and achieve excellence in their day-to-day activities. Each member serves as head of the legal department in their respective office and are responsible for all legal matters in their respective country whilst reporting directly to Jose María Etchegaray, who serves as director of Latin America legal affairs. The team recently changed from occasionally seeking external counsel to handling more than 75% of its legal affairs internally, Etchegaray reveals: ‘We learned that due to the complexity and particularities of the legal issues that we face in our industry, we were better handling more legal matters internally. So we created the team six years ago and since then we have been growing our team each year. We have a very self-sufficient legal department’. Helping SBA build more than 2,500 towers in the region, the legal team has elevated SBA to being the largest independent wireless communication tower company in Central America. In addition, the team gained credit for seamlessly handling all related due diligence, negotiations and executions of SBA’s contracts with its customers, landlords and vendors as well as for negotiating and closing several pivotal M&A transactions. ‘The importance of the participation of our legal team in creating value for our company is substantially unique. We are very proud, as a legal team, of the value that we helped to create for the company’, says Etchegaray.