About

The Citibank Colombia legal team has been through significant change and accomplished much in the last year and continues to demonstrate its strength. Led expertly by general counsel Francisco Baquerizo and senior lawyer Cristina Ramirez, the team of seven is structured in a way that each lawyer is the legal partner of a defined area or product or matter. The team is distributed depending on their level of seniority and expertise that meets the complexity that the matter entails. According to Baquerizo, each member has ‘an important level of autonomy with the corresponding accountability. Junior lawyers report to other lawyers and my four direct reports report to me escalating the corresponding matter’. The team covers financial and securities market activities in Colombia through the bank, the trust company, the brokerage house, activities of foreign Citi entities through representation figures and correspondent agreements. It also supports the hub activities and processes built up to serve the region from another legal vehicle established in Colombia. Citi, in execution of its strategy in Latin America to focus its efforts in the business that has more presence and representation, sold its consumer business and small and medium company business to Scotiabank, focusing on the corporate clients and businesses. The transaction was announced in January 2018 and was closed and executed in June of that year. Baquerizo highlights that ‘this was a very exciting experience for the team as this is was the first transaction in the Colombian market of this nature executed by two banks. It was a learning process for the team [as well as] very challenging, as we needed to guarantee the success of the transaction, and continue servicing the needs of the corporate business’. The deal created the separation of the team as five team members were transferred to the buyer. He adds that, ‘I used this opportunity to assign new responsibilities to some of the lawyers so that their constant learning and growing process continued, and to remap the way we were operating as a team. Changes were made to our processes and procedures to be more effective and efficient, and to ensure that the proper resources are dedicated to matters that add value’.