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

The legal department at Diageo Colombia operates in four different but complementary fields. We are driven by our commercial priorities, taking care of risk mitigation and management, protecting the company’s reputation while adding value to every matter we are involved in.

We have been very active recently in areas in which we have been very active are legal, security, brand protection and business integrity.

Concerning the legal side of things, we have collaborated with different internal partners to get new distribution agreements in place according to the new need of the business, mitigating risks and getting the best possible agreements for all the parties involved. We have worked closely with the finance team to simplify processes and control payments for commercial and marketing actions. Additionally, we have redefined the local production agreement with a local third party enabling a long-term relationship well framed on duties and obligations for each party.

We have dynamically implemented technological tools, thanks to the incorporation of the contract lifecycle management tool to make contract processes more agile and simple.

Moreover, we have taken actions to manage a proper data privacy policy and establish the governance around it, not just to comply with law and regulation, but to commit all the organisation to compliance, promoting employee training.

On the security side of things, we have established a full external network of contacts — authorities, associations, police, and the army — to reinforce our security position and protect our people, assets and brand. We have been assessing risks on routes and regions where we operate in order to define the best security measures for the transportation of our products. Furthermore, we have established an awareness plan on security for our people and a full range of benefits to feeling secure when working in different cities and regions.

The legal team has been at the forefront of brand protection, monitoring e-commerce platforms and working with other departments to reduce counterfeit in online sales.

Business integrity, compliance, control and ethics have been our top priorities. We have generated a culture of trust where people are able to raise concerns. We constantly keep track of internal controls and audits to get the best process and results. To do so, we have trained our people in our code of conduct as the principal guidelines to be followed by all our employees.

Thanks to the alliance with external associations, we are on top of any changes in regulations and requirements.