About

A former chair of the Inter-American Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar and member of its executive committee, Joe Hill has had an impressive trajectory: having served as general counsel for Latin America at both JPMorgan and MetLife, he is currently managing director and head of legal and compliance for Latin America and Iberia at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. Unsurprisingly, such positions have involved him in hugely significant matters, both transactional, such as Metlife’s $16.2bn multijurisdictional acquisition of American Life Insurance Company from AIG in 2010; and contentious, such as the largest and most complex litigation dispute ever faced by JPMorgan (and a number of other financial institutions) in Latin America, following the failure of Uruguay’s leading bank. This resulted in two arbitrations seated in New York, as well as both criminal and civil litigation in a myriad of jurisdictions, all of which were resolved favourably for the bank. Today ‘the face of BlackRock in all of its Latin American strategy’, the US-born Hill formerly worked at Mayer Brown and Uría Ménendez and is fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese. ‘He is unique as a general counsel’, comments Ferrere’s managing partner Andrés Cerisola, ‘in so far as he is both very hands on, but, while always knowing every facet of a case, also being willing to defer to external counsel once he feels comfortable that he is in good hands, although one has to win that trust. He is always deeply involved and absolutely up to the minute in his knowledge of a case. A true team builder, he can bring on board big names and have them work effectively together, and he has both local and linguistic cultural skills. All in all, a range of talents that one does not always find in high-level corporate counsel and less still in the banking and finance sector’. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Hill also somehow finds time for significant pro bono activity and sits on the board of the not-for-profit Acción Internacional, a leading microfinance organization.