|
The legal team in Central America and the Caribbean is very small, structured as follows: a senior legal manager, which in charge of conducting the legal strategy designed by Latin America head office and global headquarters providing quality legal support for the business and an Internal Corporate Counsel. Taking into account, that the Central America and the Caribbean legal team is considered as a start-up with more than 20 countries in charge, a distributorship scheme, some direct operations, there is a lot of special project and operative work that needs to be performed.
To that extent, there was a need to hire additional support which – an attorney with similar background as I have – in order to help me with the development of those activities. In addition, we have the support of law firms in every single country we deal with for specific tasks, due diligence or any regulatory or specific inquiry that we need to solve.
The most significant cases and transactions will be the legal support for the installation of the first warehouse for Fresenius in the region, applying for the different tax regimens exemptions, specific permits as well as specific operations license that are required to perform this kind of task in accordance to the regulations that are set forth for the medical devices industry, in the Republic of Panama as well as the Central America region and Dominican Republic.
One of the main competitive advantage of Fresenius Medical Care is the acquisition, administration and operation of an entire facility which are dialysis clinics for the treatment of patients suffering of renal diseases in early stages or chronic kidney diseases only in those markets in which the regulations allows private companies to operate regarding this kind of disease. To that extent, we have in sight some interesting targets in key countries like in the biggest country in Central America and in some islands in the Caribbean.
Our legal involvement will be focused on determining risks before, during and after the entire acquisition process particularly important, the effort regarding legal due diligence, the kick off meeting, follow ups in meetings and establishment of methodologies for the outside counsels engage in these matters.
One of the most important elements is to have a balance between cost and efficiency in order to obtain satisfactory analysis and clear identification of the risks, so this can be viable with the strategy set forth by business development. I particularly select law firms that have agile members in which the team can be reachable without too many protocols or formalisms in order to be fast, practical and always, business oriented bearing in mind all the times that Patients come first and through all our work from the legal side, we are obliged through it, to improve the quality of life of our patients.
Due to the many countries that are under my legal operation, in 2019 I would have to say that presidential elections will be a key issue that has impacted our company. The election of new presidents with different political orientation (mostly social democrats in El Salvador and in Panama and right wing in Guatemala) has a direct impact in the public policies regarding the health sector, and the investment governments decide to inject. Also, it has a direct impact in the tax regimen design.
The convulsed Nicaraguan situation that remains so sensitive has certain impacts regarding any interest in investing directly or perhaps the lack of a define policy regarding renal patients in Honduras or the economic blockades that the United States has imposed to Cuba, sharpening even more the Cuban delicate economic and social situation. These are challenges that are impacting our current commercial strategy as well as the company.
In Panama, for instance, there was an approval of law 90 of 2017 during the past governmental administration in which medical device companies have the obligation to register devices, equipment, medicines and materials at the Medical Devices Office of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Panama. However, with the entrance of a new government administration some changes were made to this law, so as legal team we need to be on the top of this, giving proper legal support to all business units.
All of these events and changes have impacted our legal team. We truly need to be updated with this information, evaluate all of it, identify all legal risks and develop strategies to mitigate them pursuant to the tools provided by the law.
I will have to say that the main focus for the company can be summarize by two main points. One will be the implementation of a regional project that consists in a contract management tool that will obliged all the business units to requests business agreement through this tool. The complexity of this tool is based on the specific contract templates pursuant to our industry, which are not common or easily to digest to the extent required from everybody. The intention for this is to have a legal team deeply involved in the strategy of the company and avoid being only legal operations.
The other focus that the legal team is involved as well is in the potential acquisition of dialysis centres in the region. If this happens, as a legal team we are already thinking about the potential integration of the current operation with Fresenius policies, as well as the legal impact that this will have to the entire business in the country without affecting the current operation of the facility. Our intention to assist in this procedure, particularly to develop legal matrix containing the legal requirements demands from each jurisdiction and how to merge the clinic operation with Fresenius Medical Care standard and policies, always respecting the local practice and local law.
