Colombia Teams 2019
| Coca-Cola FEMSA
Coca-Cola FEMSA
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Legal manager, Maricel Álvarez Chavarría, is a key leader since he...
| Coca-Cola FEMSA
The Coca-Cola Company’s largest bottler, Coca Cola FEMSA, was founded in 1991 as a joint venture between the US beverage company and Monterrey-based FEMSA. Today the company earns around $11bn...
| Coca-Cola FEMSA
With a presence in Colombia for over a decade, Coca-Cola FEMSA currently operates seven bottling plants located in major production centres in the country and employs approximately 5,000 people that...
| Coca-Cola
Operating in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama since 2003, Coca-Cola FEMSA currently has a substantial presence in the region with its five plants and 32 distribution centres that allow...
| Coca-Cola FEMSA
Coca-Cola FEMSA was set up in Argentina in October 1991, with Coca-Cola FEMSA de Buenos Aires being acquired by the company later in 1997. Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest franchise...
Silvia Barrero, legal and corporate affairs vice president, leads an eight-lawyer in-house legal team for Coca-Cola FEMSA in Colombia. She leads the legal team drawing on more than 15 years of experience in the company, managing the legal, corporate affairs, corporate communication and sustainability areas. Reporting to her is labour lawyer Carlos Martínez who has been working in Coca-Cola FEMSA since 2011, and is currently chief for judicial matters with a team of four executives in charge of labour, administrative, permits and licenses and property law, managing more than 800 processes. Legal senior executive Juan David Ovalle is in charge of corporate, commercial, foreign exchange, customs law regarding free trade zone, financial, sanitary law and prejudicial claims with a team of two lawyers. The legal team has a horizontal organisational structure, with less supervision levels and a team that is specialised and focused on specific branches of law. Additionally, since 2019 it is returning to a regional structure in the cities of Medellín and Barranquilla in order to guarantee permits and licenses compliance and gain more representativeness in the local operations. Barrero highlights that, ‘legal areas should have the ability to promote a legal culture in the organisation with a friendly environment with the internal client and have to be seen as allies to reach corporate and business goals’.
