About

Following the start of her career as an associate at law firm Carey, Paola Cifuentes has enjoyed a 20 year career in Chile’s in-house legal market, establishing herself as a leading Chilean counsel in the process. After Carey, Cifuentes moved to Endesa (today Enel) where she spent eight years before transitioning to the mining sector by joining Antofagasta Minerals in 2007 as a corporate attorney. Commenting on one of her highlights during her five year spell there, Cifuentes identifies working on the project finance of Esperanza, which ‘meant a one year dedication working with all the areas of the corporate area, jointly with all the banks and external legal counsel which turned out as a successful operation with the finance of an important project for Antofagasta Minerals’, she explains. Between 2012 and 2015, Cifuentes was legal director at Codelco, the largest copper-producing mining company in the world and the biggest company in Chile. In charge of the management of the legal team of Codelco, she spent three months as acting general counsel during her time there and was the legal advisor of the issuance of bonds for US$2bn where Codelco obtained the lowest interest rate of a company in Latin America. Cifuentes has enhanced her successful career during her time at multinational mining company Anglo American. In her current role at the company she has contributed effectively towards a number of deals including the execution of a power purchase agreement with Enel in 2016 for a contract until 2030 and the agreement of four-year collective bargaining contracts with the unions for the mining operations of Anglo American which ended a legal strike by miners and thus resumed the company’s operations. With such credentials under her belt, Cifuentes is rightly ranked amongst Chile’s top in-house lawyers.

To learn more about Anglo American’s efforts in the mining industry, please click here.