About

Vice president of legal services and general secretary Ulises Canosa Suárez leads a legal team of 50 members at BBVA Colombia, a major Colombian banking institution. The legal team is divided into three sections known at the Bank as “disciplines, front and legal management group” and within that it covers a whole range of commercial, corporate and banking legal services for the Bank. It was recently updated and expanded to include new areas as well as work in an agile format. Canosa is supported by Myriam Cala León, director of the corporate discipline, who has considerable expertise in corporate governance and non-banking contractual advices. Within the team there is also Pedro Antonio Díaz, director of the banking discipline, who covers the bank’s legal advice networks and its broker and dealer, BEI and mortgage centres. The team is also served by William Rincón, director of the capital markets discipline with considerable expertise in advising and structuring operations and treasury contracts. The team also contains director of litigation Nestor Prieto Ballén and Eduardo Arce Caicedo, who is the director of strategy and development with expertise in regulatory compliance, business support and internal risk control. Over the past year the team has worked on numerous complex transactions and achieved results of 90% favourability. According to Canosa, ‘the legal team has stood out for [its] commitment to investing in case preparation and high class performance’. He identifies that the team has also overcome challenges due to the restrictions Colombian law creates regarding technology. He adds, ‘Colombian law has not evolved at the same pace as technology and this has been a challenge for the legal team’. As a result, transactions using digital banking programmes have been promoted, which has led BBVA Colombia to be placed as one of the top five most technologically updated entities in the financial sector in Colombia.