About

Jorge Adrián Rincón Plata started his career after completing a LLM in international business law from Queen Mary University of London, as a lawyer at the Banco de Bogotá, and was promoted to international and treasury vice president as legal advisor in 2007. At Banco de Bogotá he was in charge of providing legal advice on cross border transactions such as syndicated loan facilities, negotiation of documentary credits for cross border transactions, negotiation of the ISDA Master Agreements and derivatives contracts with international counterparties. Also, he supported the legal requirements of the trading floor’s proprietary trading transactions, fixed income securities, and the offering of structured products to the costumers of the bank. He also worked across jurisdictions and advised on the company’s foreign operations. Rincón led the legal team at the bank during the challenges resulting from the 2008 banking meltdown, and in particular managed its response to the crisis including the increased regulations, and contractual risk matters. His management of the situation led the bank to promote him to chief legal counsel in 2012. Highlights of Rincón’s career at Grupo Aval, Colombia’s third largest company and second largest bank, include his handling of international disputes in France and Greece involving Colombia and letters of credit, conducting the due diligence and contractual negotiation for the acquisition of BAC Credomatic, and the preparation for Grupo Aval’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. Rincón considers these transactions to be a determining factor for the regional positioning of Grupo Aval a as regional multinational with presence in over 10 countries. Recently, regulatory initiatives have received renewed attention in the agenda of the legal department. In particular, for the financial industry, Colombia’s OECD accession process required among others, the strengthening of the standards of corporate governance applicable to securities issuers in Colombia and the enactment of regulation for financial conglomerates. This required a comprehensive update to the corporate governance architecture of Grupo Aval in line with the new law with respect to, capital adequacy, corporate governance standards, financial risk management and internal control framework and criteria for identifying, administering, monitoring and revealing conflicts of interest. On this challenge, Rincón says, ‘this law is indeed the most significant reform of the financial system in the last 30 years and as such, my efforts have been particularly dedicated to educate members of our organisation regarding the changes and potential impact of the proposed regulation in order to allow the debate of this proposal within industry members and with regulators and supervisors, not only from the legal, but also from a general business approach’.