About

A highly proficient and astute lawyer, Javiera Alarcón López has been developing her skills in-house for over eight years. It began in March 2011, when she was being employed as the official in charge of the Transparency Unit of the Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago (GORE) and was responsible for leading the implementation of the management model of the law on transparency and access to public information, one of the most relevant statutes on state modernisation and democratisation in Chile. In her next professional step she moved to the Chilean subsidiary of Elecnor, a Spanish company engaged in the construction, operation and maintenance of electricity generation and transmission assets. As attorney of the department of operations, Alarcón was assigned to the Ancoa Line – Alto Jahuel project. Considered as one of the most relevant and largest construction projects in Chile, the project consisted of the construction and operation of a transmission line spanning over 255km. ‘The most enriching and challenging task as a professional was leading the negotiations conducted with the various communities and owners affected by the construction of the line. Harmonising the various interests at stake, while taking into consideration the pursued goals and the project’s limitations, allowed me to develop new skills as an attorney and to understand the broad spectrum of abilities required for a proper practice of the legal profession’, she shares. Having displayed her leadership skills at Elecnor, Alarcón joined the Chilean operation of Abengoa, a Spanish leader in innovative technological solutions, as general counsel and a permanent member of the Gender Equality Commission of the Abengoa Group for Latin America. As in-house counsel, she led a multidisciplinary group in the implementation of non-conventional renewable energy generation and electricity transmission projects there but enrolled onto an LLM course at Georgetown University in the US to gain an ‘updated knowledge on a dynamic and constantly evolving field such as the energy market, as well as of the need of possessing relevant international experience’, she explains. After graduating, she returned to Chile in 2017 assuming the position of controller and general counsel of the local operation of Atlantica Yield, a multinational company based in the UK, engaged in the exploitation of assets in the markets for electricity generation, non-conventional renewable energy, electricity transmission and hydric resources. So far she been involved in transactions and litigations amounting up to US$80m as well as expanding the scope of the legal function by developing and managing the company’s compliance programme as well as leading and conducting the company’s financial operations. ‘The aforesaid changes have had a positive impact on the business’s conduction, because they have facilitated the overcoming of certain prejudices that may have existed regarding the duty of in-house attorneys, who are now progressively perceived as key agents that are absolutely integrated in the daily course of business’, Alarcón says. She is also credited for working on the M&A transaction of Atlantica Yield in Chile. ‘This task entailed the coordination and integration of the various facets of a project of this nature (legal, technical, operational and financial), permanently reporting before the board of directors, negotiating its financing, and processing the relevant authorisations and permits before the local authorities’, she says concerning some of the challenges the deal encountered.