About

Founded in 1958, Giesecke y Devrient (G&D) Mexico was the first subsidiary of G&D Group, a company specialising in the payment, secure communication, and identity management sectors, to be set up outside Germany. The subsidiary currently produces 60 million cards every year and provides smart card solutions and services to its major clients in Latin America that include commercial banks, central banks, government organisations and major mobile telephone operators in the region. Legal counsel, Jorge Martinez integrated the legal team of four members within a two-year period at the company’s Mexico subsidiary. One of the team’s first achievements was harmonising procedures and data system administration in order to have a balanced management of the legal department’s database. Breaking the traditional feeling from commercial areas that legal departments are obstacles or ‘deal breakers’, the team supports the sales and commercial teams in private tenders, public bids, and corporate transactions. Martinez says: ‘we walk with our colleagues with a unified purpose of closing the deals, covering all the relevant matters like safe terms and conditions, risk mitigation, and others’. Despite the team’s relatively recent existence, it has already made a tangible impact on the company through its assistance on private tenders for the telecom and financial institutions business units, public bids for the government solutions business unit and corporate transactions that include global mergers, spin-offs and regional transactions. With the ethos of “creating confidence” at all levels of the business, the team has a positive reputation with G&D Mexico’s executive management team. Martinez says, ‘the legal team interact with the different internal areas, the contact can be made through any member of the legal team, who maintain a permanent contact in order to be informed of every requirement from internal and external customers’.