About

Jorge De Los Ríos is a legal professional with strong expertise in commercial law, competition law, consumer protection and intellectual property. Currently he oversees the legal function at Unilever, which incorporates 16 employees in nine different countries. During his one-year tenure as general counsel and business integrity officer for Colombia and the Andean region for Unilever, De Los Ríos has undertaken a successful restructuring of the legal department cutting some positions in order to have a lighter and more efficient structure and entering into special agreements with firms instead. By outsourcing operational and standardised work, the legal team is now able to concentrate on more strategically focused work for the business. For this reason, De Los Ríos is praised for making his legal team more integrated with the rest of the business: ‘I demand to have a team that assumes a more strategic and “close to the business” approach’, he says. ’The counsel are also accountable for the business results and therefore need to understand the business needs and goals’. In particular De Los Ríos’s tenure at Unilever is characterised by his efforts to formulate a legal strategy against a disruptive competitor. He explains: ‘This case was a landmark case in Colombia and for Unilever worldwide. Unilever reversed a decreasing trend of market share in one of our main products in a very short period of time’. Prior to his current role as general counsel at Unilever, De Los Ríos led the Antitrust & Competition practice at law firm Posse Herrera Ruiz (PHR) in Colombia. Whilst at PHR De Los Ríos participated in some of the most well-known and relevant merger cases such as: Cencosud/Carrefour, Recalcine/Lafrancol, Toyota de Colombia/Distoyota as well as notable cartel investigations. On top of the antitrust practice, he was also involved in privacy and digital legal advice, supporting initiatives for Facebook, Apple and Davivienda among other relevant clients. Prior to his experience at PHR, De Los Ríos worked as legal manager for Philip Morris International, where he worked for six years (2006-2012) and was responsible for legal matters in Colombia, while also leading antitrust matters for Latin America. Before that, he worked in some of the most well-known firms in Colombia such as Esguerra Asociados (2003-2006), Cavelier Abogados (2000-2001) and Gómez Pinzón Zuleta (1997-2000).