In Latin America, Bank of America Merrill Lynch offers a full range of financial products and services to corporations, institutions and governments. Since 2011, Alejandro E. Athié has been the Mexico general counsel for Bank of America Merrill Lynch and in 2014 added the responsibility for the Southern Cone countries (Chile and Argentina). Athié has introduced diverse attorney profiles to the function and fortified this by regularly giving the legal team the opportunity to rotate tasks, as well as giving them fresh conducive feedback which keeps them prepared and trained to deal with the new increased legal complexity in the industry.

Athié explains the importance of this by saying: ‘We see more legal complexity. Mexico has favourably evolved in the protection of individual rights through important constitutional amendments and now it is more common to see that important legal matters are solved through constitutional and judicial precedent and interpretation’. Prior to his current role, Athié was at Deutsche Bank Mexico servings as general counsel and chief compliance officer, advising on financial and advisory products to Mexican corporate and institutional clients. Between 1995 and 2002, Athié worked for the Securities Industry Association and The Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV) where he was in charge of the regulatory and market surveillance areas, also acting as the general counsel for the derivatives exchange, an experience which provided him the opportunity to interact with all Mexican Financial regulators as well as US regulators including the SEC, NYSE and Nasdaq. In 1991, while still in law school, he started working for various international law firms in Mexico City, including Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle, where he worked on corporate matters and later Santamarina y Steta, where he worked on commercial litigation matters.