Bustamante Fabara promotes tax director to partner

Leading Ecuadorean firm Bustamante Fabara has strengthened its tax and customs practice area by promoting one of its directors to partner.

The firm announced the appointment of Diego Pino Roditti to its partnership on 1 May. The firm now counts 17 partners.

Pino boasts over 20 years of experience in the tax practice area with a focus on tax matters, corporate restructuring, estate planning and M&A work. He was promoted to the role of tax director in 2022, having spent the previous 16 years as an associate at the firm. That includes time as a lawyer at Fabara & Compañía, before it merged with Bustamante & Bustamante in 2021. He began his career as an adviser to the Vice Presidency of the Republic between 1999 and 2001, and also worked as adviser to Ecuador’s National Council of Free Trade Zones and Ministry of International Trade.

Managing partner of the firm, Maria Rosa Fabara, comments that the promotion of Pino to partner comes as the firm “foresee[s] significant opportunities for robust growth in tax planning and tax advice in the future.”

Fabara is confident that Pino “will rise to the challenge,” while the promotion of the director to the firm’s partnership demonstrates that Bustamante Fabara “stands behind its career plan commitments,” she adds.

Bustamante Fabara is renowned for its strong M&A and IP practices, while its mining and energy prowess is also noted. It has a prominent position on noteworthy transactions throughout the region, two years into its merger. It won in the ESG finance and regulatory categories of Latin Lawyer’s Deal of the Year Awards, receiving the award at a charity ceremony last week. Among those, it was recognised for its advice to Credit Suisse in the structuring of Ecuador’s debt-for-nature swap – which was the world’s largest transaction of its kind upon closing.

The Ecuadorean outfit last bolstered its offering a year ago, when it hired a disputes partner from Carmigniani Pérez Abogados. That appointment closed off a busy year for expansion within the firm’s partnership, which grew through several hires and promotions. That includes its recruitment of two partners and around 10 lawyers from Deloitte Legal’s Ecuador offering in May last year, which followed on from its promotion of a corporate lawyer to director earlier in the year. Also in 2023, it added another director to its infrastructure area by hiring an in-house lawyer from Latin American construction group SANTOS CMI.