About

Head of legal and corporate governance director for the Americas at engineering company ThyssenKrupp Uhde (Mexico), Rodrigo Pérez Elizundía ‘has maintained his company at the forefront of its sector despite a difficult few years in the market’, according to one insider. Like many of his in-house counsel counterparts, he has overseen the institutionalization of the legal department he leads over recent years, renovating procedures and work systems in their entirety so as to facilitate efficiency in the interaction with other units. His hemispheric role involves ‘intense work under pressure’ and ‘the administration of limited resources’ and more specifically ‘the inherent difficulty of adapting legal concepts to the engineering industry and industrial, chemical and petrochemical plant’. Responsible for the development of cross-border strategies and the structuring of contracts with counterparts in Germany, the USA, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela and Japan, among others, he is proud of leading on the negotiation and closure of a number of key contracts for the company. His role also covers compliance matters, an area in which ThyssenKrupp as a whole has sought to take a leading position across its businesses, operating a zero-tolerance policy with regard to corruption and anti-trust infringements. Fluent in German, external counsel regard him as ‘a pleasure to work with, very pro-business and very calm and human in his manner, all of which makes him a great negotiator’.