About

The Ripley Perú legal team has worked on expanding Ripley’s retail departmental chain across Peru, supporting the company in establishing and opening numerous stores and banking branches across the country. The legal team contains a range of legal expertise to cover the wide range of areas that Ripley covers within financial services, e-commerce and shopping mall management in Peru. Describing itself as a team with ‘a down-to-earth approach, coupled with integrity, open-mindedness, responsiveness and the relentless pursuit of excellence’, the in-house legal department’s key individuals include deputy general counsel and compliance officer, Karla Ascione, head of litigation, Alexis Leon, head of retail affairs, Carolina Marallano, and anti-money laundering compliance officer, Rosario Campos. Ripley’s legal department has adopted a flat structure that seeks to open up the lines of communication and collaboration while removing layers within the organisation. It is to this end that junior and mid-level staff members are entrusted with a wide range of matters and are well-prepared to tackle the numerous legal and ethical risks in the Peruvian omni channel retailing and retail banking arena. ‘Our legal team and the banking and retail industry in general, faces ongoing challenges posed by increasingly stringent financial regulations and consumer protection and data privacy laws, and also handles non-legal issues involving public policy and the media as well as a continuing social pressure and scrutiny from consumers’, says group general counsel Mauricio Balbi. The litigation team, supervised by Leon, has empowered the team to experiment with new dispute resolution techniques which have allowed management to achieve key business goals. Although the retail banking sector has historically been one of the most challenged in terms of reputation in Peru, the successful adoption of negotiation and settlement strategies by Ripley’s litigation group has allowed the bank to improve its reputation within the Peruvian industry, attaining a +41 Net Promoter Score (NPS) in 2018, compared to a –17% NPS in 2014, based on publicly available data.