Manuel Telles, a former partner of Romero Pineda & Asociados in San Salvador, has formed his own firm, Telles & Asociados. The firm focuses on banking, insurance, M&A, project finance, corporate law, labor and litigation. Telles left his former employer in December 2015. Telles is the sole partner of his new venture, which also includes associates Eduardo Telles, Francis Ibañez, Nelson Lopez and Lorena Villacorta, who have all worked with him before.
Telles said he acted on the feeling that this was the next step in his career after 19 years of practicing law, as well as a desire to implement his personal philosophy about client relations on a firm-wide basis. “At the end of the day, I wanted my clients to feel as if I’m an in-house lawyer,” he explained.
He added, “Nowadays, with globalization and the continued advance in technologies and communications, the law firms have been merging and have become huge law firms, and basically the personalization of the lawyer of the company, the person you are going to trust with your intimate corporate matters, has been lost.”
Telles went on to reflect on the regulatory framework for the banking and finance sectors in El Salvador, stating that for the most part he was content with the framework. “Everything is as it has been for many years. We have been working with these laws for a long time, and the Superintendence of Finance has been working with us just fine,” he said. Still, he said that some changes such as expanding private structuring and amending leasing and insurance laws could be beneficiary for the sector.
Telles also expressed a wish for more investment in Central America and in El Salvador. “Our laws are not our problem; the lack of investors in El Salvador [these] days is our main problem, although we are seeing changes in some areas,” Telles said. He added that, in his view, there are opportunities for investment both in Central America and in El Salvador.
Telles pointed to shifts of ownership of Central American banks as an example of a change in the banking and finance sectors that would be advantageous for the sectors.
“The banks, they usually were owned by Central American capital; then they were bought by foreign banks are now being again bought by Central American capital, and that’s something that’s really moving, and that’s something different, that will definitely move our economies and the banking and finance sector.”