About

Arcos Dorados Holding Company is the largest franchisee of McDonald’s restaurants in the world, accounting for over 5% of the global total of franchised restaurants. Its main area of operations cover Latin America and the Caribbean, where it is one of the major employers for young and first-time employees. Anabell González Nava leads the North Latin America legal division of Arcos Dorados, which is headquartered in Mexico City and deals with all legal issues arising in Mexico and Central America. González Nava has a wealth of experience with the company, having been employed as general counsel for McDonald’s Mexico and Central America from 2005 before these regional operations developed to form Arcos Dorados in 2007. She is now in charge of a legal team of six individuals dealing with seven jurisdictions that all provide unique challenges, requiring the team’s legal responses to be tailor-made both to circumstance and geographical location. Organised into three departments to deal with corporate, licensing and administration and agreements, the Arcos Dorados North Latin America legal department is exceptional in its economical use of outside counsel – keeping work internal and costs low where possible. The team is highly-trained and places a high premium on compliance matters, which has helped them to achieve notable successes recently. Among these, the team has reduced legal contingency fees on financial statements to zero and has made great strides in reducing consumer protection fines, a testament to the usage of compliance procedures paying dividends.