Team size: 39   

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?  

As legal head of an organisation the first thing when facing a crisis or instability period is to have full awareness that under such circumstances three fronts are crucial: how to ensure business continuity, how to handle legal implications resulting from the crisis and how and when to communicate relevant information to stakeholders. The key to handling all these effectively is to have a crisis protocol that ensures all teams of the organisation act in a coordinated way following predefined procedures and guidelines. Considering the above and based on my experience, legal matters cannot be considered or dealt with in an isolated way; they must be address jointly with all other areas of the company to make adequate risks assessments and take preventive measures to mitigate their impact and safeguard business continuity. 

What are the main cases or transactions you have been involved in recently?  

Recent main transactions or cases I had to lead include the legal structuring of the investment deployment of COP$317.000.000.000 by institutional investors to acquire building rights that will enable to development of Master Plan Hacienda El Bosque in Bogota a large scale residential housing project of more than 10.000 units (under the model of “city within a city” which offers and integral development with supplementary services and public space as well as an integration with and recovery of key ecosystems in the area). Also, a structured debt transaction of COP$55.000.000.000 for the substitution of short-term corporate debt of the company. On the sustainability front I actively participated in the creation in 2023 of the company’s Executive Sustainability Committee with the participation of all Vice Presidents of the organization to ensure coordinated actions under the sustainability strategy also adopted in 2023; this helped us jointly defined the company’s short-, mid- and long-term goals in all dimensions of sustainability. 

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?  

Over the past seven years I have had the privilege to lead both the legal team and the sustainability team of the company. This has allowed me to build an integral understanding of all aspects of the business along with its risks matrix and integrate my role as general counsel to help define policies, manuals and procedures to ensure that sustainability goals are reached. One of the most significant milestones for the company in 2024 was to propose the adoption of Biodiversity Policy and becoming the first organisation in the sector to have specific goals in terms of biodiversity conservation and recovery to contribute with the mitigation of climate change effects. It was very exciting that the policy was approved unanimously by our Executive Sustainability Committee and we have started our implementation phase. This is a key feature of our integral sustainability strategy that necessarily requires actions and measures from our operations teams from the structuring phase of our projects. We expect by 2030 to have 1,000 hectares (10 million m2) preserved and restored in threatened and strategic ecosystems and to reach a biodiversity gain of 10% within our projects (this 10% will include both mandatory and voluntary environmental compensations). 

We aim to inspire other companies in the sector as well as in other sectors to join forces and invite them to adopt their own policies; the truth is that, in sustainability, to reach deeper impacts you need to promote articulated actions.