About

With a presence in Peru for almost 100 years, the financial activities of Citibank del Peru are supported by a legal team consisting of four highly experienced in-house lawyers who assist in sophisticated and cross-border financial transactions that the bank participates in. The small but efficient legal department has experts that are constantly trained in New York and Miami in their areas of expertise, in addition to the knowledge of local regulation, in order to add value to the different areas of the bank. General counsel Lorena Carillo has led the team in this position since 2005, overseeing legal counsels Rodrigo de la Puente, Paola Schulz and Claudia Sugahara, all of whom have previous experience across the financial sector and regulatory matters. One of the main characteristics of the members of Citibank’s Peruvian legal team is being interdisciplinary. Being a small legal area working for a medium-sized bank in its local operations and sophisticated in its international products, each lawyer is responsible for advising diverse areas of business. This requires having to thoroughly understand how each business works, as well as its products, objectives and operating processes in addition to accounting, credit, strategic and reputational issues, in order to give the added value that the bank expects from its lawyers. ‘Thus, we are creative at the moment of structuring the transactions, looking for alternatives that allow us to develop breakthrough products for the market; structured at the time of mapping operational processes, in the search to simplify and strengthen internal procedures; and leaders in the search for solutions that apply to the highest ethical standards aligned with the culture of Citibank’, says de la Puente. Amongst its many successful transactions, the most recent one in late December 2018 saw the legal team involved in closing the acquisition financing of Promotora Grupo las Americas, a leading Colombian healthcare group operating in Medellín, for a total value of US$180m by Grupo Salud del Peru (Auna), part of Enfoca, a leading private equity firm in Peru. This complex transaction involved simultaneous loans in US dollars and Peruvian soles, in Colombia and Peru respectively, sharing a collateral package in the form of a trust of shares, assets and flows, and corporate guarantees.