About

Covering legal matters for HSBC México, one of Mexico’s four largest banking and financial service companies, the legal team comprises of 108 members (83 lawyers and 25 paralegals), specialising in retail banking, litigation, administration and global banking. The team is led by general counsel Gonzalo Mendez, who has improved the department’s communication and gives a holistic view of legal issues within the banking industry, an element which is increasingly important as global regulation increases. Since joining the Mexican division of HSBC, Mendez has completely restructured the department to become close-working partners of the business. This process included aligning lawyers into the business unit operations. All members of the team are experts in retail banking, wealth management and insurance and have impacted the strategic direction of the company by successfully reducing costs in litigation by analysing route processes and reviewing legal information. The team has also restructured established objectives to prove to management the need for investing in the legal function. In proposing these significant ideas for improvement, the legal team is considered not just a problem solver but profit maker too, praised for its ability to recover mortgages in the market. These mortgages were previously at 50% recovery, but after the team’s work the rate is now at 85%. Amongst some of the teams’ most notable achievements, they succeeded in negotiating a pivotal agreement with the US government in 2012 when HSBC was at risk of losing their US banking license.