About

Joining Latin America’s largest mass multimedia company, Grupo Televisa, as general counsel for their newly launched internet company, Armando Martinez was asked to lead the group’s digital and internet legal strategy. Over the next two years, the scope of his role increased to cover M&A and publishing areas. Martinez has participated in several M&A transactions instrumental to the diversification of the group and is heavily involved in the development of internal policies and commercial strategies that permit the company to adapt to the changing regulatory environment in the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors. Between 2002 and 2006, Martinez became general counsel for the Central American and Dominican Republic platform of leading satellite pay television company Sky México, which Televisa is a majority shareholder of. After this stint Martinez returned to Grupo Televisa to adopt the role of deputy general counsel for the entire group. In this role since 2007, he initially led most of the corporate, M&A, finance and transactional legal work but his role has gradually included further responsibilities including oversight of the litigation, regulatory, compliance, intellectual property, labour/employment, tax and multinational commerce legal departments of the group. With over 80 direct and indirect reports, one of Martinez’s primary goals has been to foster leadership skills in the company’s personnel. He says ‘the creation of career development policies and committees have been instrumental in detecting internal talent and providing opportunities to grow within the organisation’. As an example of the development opportunities, Martinez has facilitated legal English lessons to all staff and has widely promoted educational programmes for the team. This has resulted in over 35 of Televisa’s in-house lawyers completing graduate degrees in 2015, from premier Mexican universities. Outside of his role at Televisa, Martinez actively participates in several multilateral organisations fostering both domestic and international regulations that impact intellectual property protection, free speech, broadcasting rights and telecommunications.