Lima-based Rodrigo Elias & Medrano has promoted a capital markets, M&A, project finance, and restructuring lawyer to partner. Jorge Trelles started working as a partner as of the new year. The firm also promoted tax lawyer Raúl Hidalgo and public service regulation lawyer Alejandro Manayalle.
Trelles’s appointment comes at a difficult time for the capital markets in Peru. New York City-based MSCI, an institutional investor research firm, has threatened to downgrade Peru’s status as an emerging market to a frontier market. “[If that happens, it] will force certain institutional investors to leave the stock market,” Trelles said. “We don’t expect to see many more new issuances in dollars,” he continued, adding that he expects growth in financing from banks, as well as growth in the M&A sector. “I think Peru is, during the last couple years, going through a process of deceleration. We used to be growing at a pace of 8% and now we are growing at 3%. We are a mining country primarily so when that goes down we have to adjust to the new circumstances.”
Still, although capital markets are faltering, there are opportunities in the infrastructure sector in Peru, as some estimate that projects' value will come to more than $100 billion over the next ten years.
“The government is pushing for several big infrastructure projects, and we believe that’s going to be the main driver for this and next year,” Trelles commented. When asked about challenges in the infrastructure sector, he said, “The main complaint is that it’s too cumbersome to carry on these [infrastructure] projects dealing with so many entities. Internally as a country, we still have to widen our process to make it easier for investors. Sometimes it takes too much time to see the green light on a project. I would say that’s the main roadblock.”
As an associate at Rodrigo, Trelles worked on important capital markets and project finance transactions. His capital markets repertoire includes mining company Minsur’s $450 million bond offering in February 2014 and a reopening of $75 million of notes for agro industrial company Camposol in April 2014. On the project finance side, he worked on the $6.87 billion syndicated financing for the “Las Bambas” mining project in April 2014.
Trelles earned a law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2003 and a masters degree in international business law in 2009 from the London School of Economics and Political Science.