About

Juan Pablo Barrera is currently corporate legal director at Organización Corona, a Colombian conglomerate with six business units and overseas operations throughout Central America as well as in Panama, Mexico, United States and China. With a broad wealth of experience including period at Andersen Legal and Ernst & Young, as well as private practice experience at key Colombian firm prietocarrizosa, Barrera has sought to stamp his in-house team with ‘a results-focused style of practice characterised by attention to the client and the maintenance of the same criteria and objectives as law firms’. This also includes ‘an important preoccupation with the personal and professional development’ of his team members, and he regards the consolidation of the legal department as an achievement every bit as important as the transactional activity on which he also leads. Recently this has included the acquisition of Industria Ceramica Costarricense (INCESA), finally approved by the Colombian competition authorities in August 2013, and the establishment of a strategic alliance with Victoria Capital Partners in early 2014. Driven by the ‘constant search for schemes that generate value for the organization’, he comments ‘it’s a challenge to attend the legal necessities of an organization of more than 18,000 people and with a presence in various countries in the continent’.