What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Working at Grupo Aval requires being permanently ready to be part of relevant deals involving the holding company or its subsidiaries. These deals must be completed shortly.

For more than a decade, I have been privileged to be part of great teams in charge of completing many relevant transactions for our conglomerate, ranging from unprecedented M&A deals that allowed our expansion to the Central American region to capital markets deals such as local and international bond offerings as well as Grupo Aval debut at NYSE with its IPO.

Even amidst the unexpected reality derived from the Covid-19 propagation, we completed the acquisition of Multi Financial Group, holding of Multibank, in Panama.

I had the opportunity to be involved in a complex and challenging transaction for Banco de Bogotá’s demerger of 75% share ownership of BAC (Bahrain Airport Company) Holding International Corp (BHI) holding company of the BAC Credomatic operation, the subsequent demerger of Grupo Aval’s pro rata share ownership in BHI (as a shareholder of Banco de Bogotá) and the double listing of BHI in the Colombian and Panamanian stock exchange, the first double listing ever done in these two countries.

As in every important transaction, in addition to talent, dedication and great teamwork, adaptability always plays a key role, and even more so in this particular deal since, at some point, it involved regulators and supervisors of 10 jurisdictions. Accordingly, to execute these transactions within the proposed timeframe, the legal team had to work alongside business folks to make sure that the required and evolving changes of the proposed structure made sense in a holistic approach.

How have you harnessed technology to improve output or drive efficiencies?

I believe that technology has always been around to make lawyers’ work easier by taking over some “legal” tasks that a computer could effectively do with the proper parameters behind which a lawyer must input the correct criteria.

Lawyers are commonly seen as an obstacle in streamlining many obsolete processes when we are better positioned to advise or contribute to identifying alternative ways to simplify these processes while continuing to comply with regulations. I like to think that my approach to technology has made business and strategy colleagues turn to my team with the expectation that we will be a source to untangle the different challenges identified. Both in relatively simple matters and more complex matters, such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain, there are always detractors and supporters; my team and I work with the purpose of being seen as supporters of these initiatives, which requires an attitude towards change backed by the legal knowledge that allows seeking for responses.