Santiago Carregal

Santiago Carregal heads the banking and finance department and is the firm’s chairman. He has extensive experience in banking and finance and capital markets, and has represented companies, banks and multilateral lending institutions in more than 180 transactions, including initial public offerings, tender and exchange offers, mortgage securitisations, project financing, and the development and financing of real estate projects using debt, equity or hybrid instruments.

In recent years, he has focused particularly on mergers and acquisitions and led many of the country’s largest deals, including the sale of GE Money to Banco Supervielle; the sale of GE Money Argentina’s branches to Banco Columbia; the acquisition by Indian group Aegis of Argentina’s two largest call centres; and Dufry AG’s acquisition of Interbaires—the largest duty-free operator in Argentina—as well as duty-free businesses in Uruguay, Ecuador and Armenia and its logistics platform, in three combined transactions worth US$ 950 million. He also advised on the sale by Belgian giant Solvay of its majority stake in chemical company Indupa.

“Eminent practitioner Santiago Carregal is the chairman of Marval O’Farrell Mairal and heads the banking and finance department of the firm. He is well-known among market commentators for his longstanding experience in the field.”

Chambers Latin America, 2024

Santiago Carregal heads the banking and finance department and is the firm’s chairman. He has extensive experience in banking and finance and capital markets, and has represented companies, banks and multilateral lending institutions in more than 180 transactions, including initial public offerings, tender and exchange offers, mortgage securitisations, project financing, and the development and financing of real estate projects using debt, equity or hybrid instruments.

In recent years, he has focused particularly on mergers and acquisitions and led many of the country’s largest deals, including the sale of GE Money to Banco Supervielle; the sale of GE Money Argentina’s branches to Banco Columbia; the acquisition by Indian group Aegis of Argentina’s two largest call centres; and Dufry AG’s acquisition of Interbaires—the largest duty-free operator in Argentina—as well as duty-free businesses in Uruguay, Ecuador and Armenia and its logistics platform, in three combined transactions worth US$ 950 million. He also advised on the sale by Belgian giant Solvay of its majority stake in chemical company Indupa.

Santiago Carregal also has extensive experience in corporate debt restructurings. During Argentina’s 2001/2002 financial crisis, he represented both companies and banks in restructuring processes involving more than US$ 7 billion. The companies he represented included the Telecom group, comprising four companies in two countries, which he advised on the restructuring of US$ 4 billion in financial debt—the largest private restructuring in Argentina’s history (2002-2006).

From 2012 to 2014, Santiago Carregal and Dr. Héctor Mairal led the team of lawyers representing Repsol and Repsol Butano in all matters relating to the expropriation of their stake in YPF. The work included arbitration and litigation, as well as the agreement with the Government, Argentina’s first expropriation settlement.

Chambers & Partners —the world’s leading legal profession guide—describes Dr. Carregal as “a brilliant lawyer, one of the best in the country”. He has been recognised as a “Leading Lawyer” in banking and finance, capital markets, corporate M&A and project finance by many other legal publications, including Who’s Who Legal, PLC Which Lawyer, The Legal 500 and IFLR 1000.

Santiago was a foreign associate at Shearman & Sterling in New York, Vice-President and Assistant General Counsel at JP Morgan’s Buenos Aires branch, and a partner at Carregal & Funes de Rioja. He graduated in law from the University of Buenos Aires in 1984 and earned an LLM from the University of Illinois, US, in 1987.