DLA Piper hires from Garrigues and Baker Mckenzie in Colombia

The global legal giant announced that Juan Manuel de la Rosa, Felipe Quintero and José Miguel Mendoza have joined its Colombian member firm, DLA Piper Martinez Beltran as partners. 

Jose Miguel Mendoza is a former chief judge for Colombia’s corporate law court and is currently a professor of corporate law at Universidad de los Andes. He holds a doctoral degree from Oxford University. 

Juan Manuel de la Rosa holds an LLM degree from Columbia University and joins the firm from the Bogotá office of Baker McKenzie where he co-chaired the M&A and Banking and Finance practice groups. He had previously worked as a foreign associate at legacy Chadbourne & Parke (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in New York.

Felipe Quintero arrives from Garrigues in Bogotá where he served as head of M&A. His experience includes working as a foreign associate at the London office of Cravath. Quintero holds an LLM degree from Harvard University and is also a professor of business and financial contracts at Universidad de los Andes in the Colombian capital. 

“Felipe, José and Juan bring an incredible amount of combined experience and skill to the firm,” said Camilo Martinez, managing partner of DLA Piper Martinez Beltran in the announcement. “Their deal-making prowess is virtually unmatched in the Colombian corporate arena, and their broad experience in M&A, private equity and finance will be highly advantageous to our clients. This move significantly enhances our platform in the region.”

DLA Piper has significantly expanded across Latin America since it landed in Brazil in 2010 via a cooperation agreement with independent law firm Campos Mello Advogados. The global firm has followed several paths and strategies to cover the region, in 2011 it entered into a relationship agreement with a law firm in Caracas and this was later restructured in 2016 as market conditions in Venezuela became more adverse. It was reported that DLA Piper continues to engage the services of their former team on the ground. The firm arrived in Mexico in 2012 adding a local law firm and became DLA Piper Gallastegui y Lozano in that country. The Mexico team expanded when the firm bolted on a tax boutique in 2017.  

The multinational law firm added its Colombian member, DLA Piper Martinez Beltrán, in 2015 and it landed in Chile in 2016 and in Peru in 2017. With that last move, it became the third global law firm to have a presence in the four Latin American countries which are members of the Pacific Alliance (Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico). Additionally, DLA Piper has had a Miami presence since 2015 as well as a Puerto Rico office which opened in 2016.