About

Founded in 1934 and headquartered in Santiago, Larraín Vial currently ranks as one of the biggest financial intermediation and advisory firms in Latin America. The company has launched offices in Peru in 2004 and Colombia in 2006, and began operations as a broker dealer in the US in 2010, adding to its already sizeable domestic base with 10 regional offices, scattered from northern Antofagasta to southern Puerto Montt. Running a commercial operation with such wide geographical scope presents major challenges of a legal and compliance nature to the business, which depends more and more heavily on its legal team to move things forward. Supporting the company across many different markets throws up different challenges for Matías Vial and his team, as they have to show familiarity with a whole set of unique commercial, legal and regulatory drivers. This is all the more impressive given the importance of legal matters the group’s subsidiaries frequently encounter, some of which can have a profound impact on the company’s long term strategy. Vial and his team are extremely competent in managing such issues, with their ability to ‘obtain consensus even in an adverse environment’ cited as one of the team’s main strengths. The team’s most senior lawyer Matías Vial, whose career spans several decades spent in-house and in private practice, has received particular mentions for his ingenuity and ability to oversee legal processes in different industry sectors.