Speakers

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  Saul Ricardo Feilbogen

  Founding Partner, Vitale, Manoff & Feilbogen

  Saul is a Founding Partner of Vitale, Manoff & Feilbogen and acts as Head of the Corporate and Finance Department of the Firm.  He is actively involved in the legal aspects of cross border deals (M&A, Joint Ventures) start-ups and buyouts. He has advised and structured different financing schemes such as IPOs (Buenos Aires Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange), Asset Backed Securities, Royalty Financing and Venture Capital. The most active industries in which Saul works include Energy and Natural Resources (Oil & Gas and Mining), Agricultural, Communication, Transport, Pharmaceutical and IT.

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  Marianna Boza

  Director & Head of Department, Brigard Urrutia

  Marianna is a Director and the head of Brigard Urrutia’s Oil & Gas and Mining Practice Group. She advises clients around the world on the operations and corporate transactions of upstream, midstream, or downstream energy companies, as well as in infrastructure and finance projects related to the mining, energy and petrochemical sectors.  She has been involved in major upstream, midstream, and downstream projects in Latin America, advising in the negotiation and drafting of the relevant contracts and in the negotiation, creation, and financing of joint ventures for the development of hydrocarbons, mining and petrochemical activities and the processing of gas in Venezuela and Colombia. She also has extensive experience providing comprehensive legal advisory services to service companies in the extractive sector, and in the development of due diligence of mining and oil projects in Colombia and Venezuela.

  Prior to joining Brigard Urrutia, Marianna was the senior legal counsel at Shell Venezuela, having also worked an in-house attorney in secondment for the legal department of Repsol and ChevronTexaco in Venezuela. She has also acted as a consultant on mining subjects for the World Bank, developing public policies projects in Colombia. She is currently the vice president of the Board of Directors of the Colombian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the director of the Extractive Committee of the Colombian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. She is a member of the Australian Colombian Business Council and a member of the Latin America Regional Executive Committee Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN).

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  Oscar Benavides

  Partner, Rodrigo, Elias & Medrano

  Oscar Benavides specialises in mining law, mining projects finance, and mergers & acquisitions. His practice focuses on financing contracts, acquisition, sale and joint venture agreements of companies and mining projects.

  Oscar has extensive experience in structuring, negotiating and executing exploration, joint venture and mining project investment contracts, as well as in acquisition operations for said projects. He counsels clients on corporate and commercial issues in general.

  He regularly teaches mining law in top-level Peruvian universities and is a member of the board of the Canada-Peru Chamber of Commerce.

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  John Price

  Managing Director, Americas Market Intelligence (AMI)

  John Price has three decades of experience in Latin American market intelligence. His teams have led more than 3,500 risk consulting and market intelligence projects throughout the region. In 2011, John established a mining practice within AMI that has served mining majors, juniors, and finance companies in their efforts to understand and navigate investment and operational risks.  To download AMI’s complementary whitepaper on Latin American mining risk, click here.

  Fluent in Spanish and English, John speaks at nearly 30 conferences (and online conferences) per year, advising business audiences on opportunities and risks in Latin America. John maintains a column in Latin Trade magazine and has written hundreds of articles. He serves as an adjunct professor at FIU and as a guest lecturer at the University of Miami.  Dear to his heart are three Latin American focused charities that he, his wife and kids all support:  TECHO, NPH, and the Social Lab Foundation.

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  Rodrigo Sánchez Mejorada Raab

  Junior Partner, Sánchez Mejorada Velasco y Ribe

  Rodrigo Sánchez Mejorada Raab is a junior partner at Sánchez Mejorada Velasco y Ribe, S.C., Mexico’s oldest law firm still practicing today. His practice focuses on domestic and cross border M&A and financing transactions in different sectors, representing both investors and financial institutions, with a strong focus on mining and natural resources transactions. Prior to joining the firm, he was part of Macleod and Dixon LLP´s international transaction team in Toronto, that oversaw transactions in several Latin American jurisdictions. In addition to his Mexican legal studies, Rodrigo has an LL.M. from the University of Chicago and is admitted to practice law in Mexico and New York.

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  Carlos Pérez-Cotapos

  Partner, Cariola Díez Pérez-Cotapos

  Carlos has been a partner of Cariola Díez Pérez-Cotapos law firm since 1999. Previously, he was a partner of the law firm Díez Pérez-Cotapos Silva & Lira. He has worked as a lawyer in the Corporate, Commercial, Mining and Environmental Law areas, advising Chilean and foreign clients on national and international transactions. He has led teams involved in significant foreign investment projects, and has participated in the mergers and acquisitions of mining companies and the financing of mining projects. Carlos has also participated as a legal advisor in various mining projects, such as Escondida, Collahuasi, Cerro Colorado, Spence, Iván, Lomas Bayas, Pimentón, Altonorte, El Morro, Pachón, and others.

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  Paula Azevedo de Castro

  Counsel, Cescon, Barrieu, Flesch & Barreto Advogados

  Paula Azevedo de Castro is Of Counsel in the mining department of Cescon, Barrieu, Flesch & Barreto Advogados. She represents both national and international clients in mergers and acquisitions transactions and also advises them in mining regulatory matters involving acquisition and sale of mining companies and mining rights, as well as in administrative regulatory proceedings involving mining and energy companies, including projects and undertakings related to mineral research, mines, dams, hydroelectric plants, railways, pipelines, transmission lines and industrial units. She is recognised for her first-rate expertise in the regulation of the safety of mining tailings dams.