About

Fortune 200 global power company AES Corporation has operated facilities in Mexico since 2000 under its subsidiary, AES México. Héctor Torres, general counsel and compliance officer for AES Mexico, leads an experienced and tight-knit team of four. They previously procured the services of external law firms but a transformation in the last two years has seen the team internalise, standardise and complete around 40% of the legal work that was previously handed to external lawyers. In addition to saving costs and building up internal skills sets, the move to a more capable in-house team was of particular importance during the structuring of a 50/50 joint venture in 2015 between AES and its local partner, Grupo Bal. The partnership will see up to $2.5bn invested, mostly in Mexico’s newly opened power sector. As Mexico undergoes a profound change in terms of moving from a monopolised electric sector to an open wholesale electricity market, the department demonstrated their value in overcoming the challenge by ‘intensifying study, attending seminars and workshops and by working arm-by-arm with our peers in the industry, deep diving in the new regulation framework’, according to Torres.