About

The in-house legal team at Arcos Dorados Mexico and Central America is led by legal director for the Northern region of Latin America Anabell González Nava, and consists of three lawyers and two assistants. The other two lawyers in the team – José Roberto Borneo Mejía and Luis Carlos Castillo Molina – focus on corporate and real estate affairs and license and administrative affairs respectively. Legal topics are mainly directed and organised by each individual lawyer, but the team discusses and analyses all relevant issues arising daily. The legal team was responsible for securing the asset monetisation initiative which saw the company across Latin America restructure its regional debt. This included the sale of many of its most valuable real estate in order to modernise restaurant premises and alleviate company debts. This process, scheduled to be completed in three years, was achieved by the team in 18 months with all work conducted internally, saving the company US$2m in legal fees and much more in debt interest. The team has also implemented, without external counsel assistance, a new delivery platform in Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica which has increased yearly sales by 20% to date. González identifies that the team’s challenge has been to ‘work and [produce] substantial results with limited resources, in both head count and budget. We have had to be very creative and effective with these two issues. However, with management support and our external lawyers’ team, we have accomplished all of our goals successfully’.