Eurodivisas, a financial entity monitored by the Bank of Spain, is the head of the Global Exchange Group, a global leader in foreign exchange services in airports, with more than 2,000 employees, branches in 21 countries and a consolidated turnover of more than €900m.

Miguel Perea-Milla Herrera joined the organisation as general counsel in 2013 and a key feature of his tenure has been creating and establishing the legal department with two objectives: ‘[To] give legal support to Spanish companies and the subsidiaries in the 21 countries where we are present, particularly concerning regulatory factors, as our activity is subject to monitoring by the many central banks [and] support the Group’s international expansion process – mainly in South America, Asia and Africa’, he says.

Now five years into the role, Perea-Milla’s legal team of three lawyers is praised internally for being one of the company’s most efficient departments. He helped achieve this by embedding values in the department aimed at cutting costs on external counsel and developing close ties to the business, whilst also implementing a system to digitally store all relevant legal documents related to the subsidiaries and standardising processes. ‘We have standardised the implementation process in new countries, mainly the subsidiary incorporation and the licencing process.

With this standardisation, we reduce implementation costs and speed up the incorporation process’, explains Perea-Milla. He is also distinguished for implementing a corporate defence program and working on a range of transactions at Global Exchange Group including the negotiation and execution of a syndicated loan for €35m, analysing the legal requirements for foreign exchange business in more than 20 countries and obtaining a foreign exchange licence in Turkey, Aruba and Antigua and Barbuda, despite the fact that their respective central banks were not granting licences for more than ten years.

Before his current position Perea-Milla spent 20 years at Mazars Group, one of the top global firms in the world for audit, financial advisory, and legal services. Prior to that, in 1992, he spent a year as legal assistant to the general counsel of Compañia Trasmediaterranea, the largest shipping company in Spain. He graduated in law from CEU San Pablo University in 1990.