FERRERE is pleased to announce that Gerardo Villagómez has joined the firm as partner in Bolivia, effective April 6, 2015. This practitioner will further strengthen the Bolivia office’s presence in corporate, regulatory, corporate governance, telecommunications and labor matters.
Villagómez’s professional practice includes lengthy experience in corporate law, inter- and intra-company relations, corporate governance, subsidiaries legal management, mergers and acquisitions, due diligences, and company windups and liquidations. He has also been involved in labor dispute settlement, conciliations, labor arbitration, and complex negotiations for company reorganizations.
Villagómez has broad experience in telecommunications, after more than ten years working at COTAS, a global telecommunications operator, and has participated in deal structuring and strategic investment projects for construction of transportation networks, implementation of wireless systems for voice and data as well as other services with CAF, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, Moodys, Fitch Ratings, Huawei, Hansa, AXS, Star One (a subsidiary of the Embratel group), and the Israeli firms of Alvarion and Gilat, among others. At COTAS he also participated in highly complex cases and strategic negotiations with companies like Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Cisco, HBO, government corporation Entel, and Nuevatel (VIVA), a subsidiary of Trilogy International Partners LLC.
FERRERE has added seven partners in recent months, with the hiring of Alejandro Pemintel in Bolivia, Guillermo Jover (formerly of White & Case LLP) in Paraguay, and promotion of Marysol Estigarribia in Paraguay, Santiago Fontana and Alejandro Pintos in Uruguay, and Jesús Beltrán in Ecuador, where FERRERE plans to open an office this year as part of its international expansion strategy, focusing on the small jurisdictions of South America.
According to Villagómez, joining the firm is a “challenge,” while at the same time an “opportunity for projection with unlimited possibilities for professional practice development, which can only be offered by a firm with FERRERE’s dimensions and projection in Latin America.” He noted that “FERRERE is on the fast track to becoming the leading firm in all of its jurisdictions, and hence is an enormous challenge, but at the same time a professional opportunity equaled by none, of being part of a team that is making history.”
Andrés Cerisola, FERRERE’s managing partner, says “We welcome Gerardo Villagómez, the second partner to join the firm in Bolivia in the last year. Gerardo’s professional personality assures us that he will become another pillar of legal strength. He is also a great team player, an essential characteristic of the partners FERRERE attracts. By bringing him into the firm we are also seeking to reinforce the firm’s knowledge of the Santa Cruz society and business community, as well as our detailed understanding of regulatory agency functioning. Gerardo’s presence is another step in the process of consolidating FERRERE as the lead firm in Bolivia, which we plan to complete in La Paz and Santa Cruz over the course of 2015.”