Passing of Dr. Damián Fernando Beccar Varela (03.27.1943 – 12.19.2019).
PRESS RELEASE
Buenos Aires, December 21st, 2019. It is with great sadness that Estudio Beccar Varela announces the passing of its partner Dr. Damián Fernando Beccar Varela, on December 19th in the city of Buenos Aires.
Damián was the firm’s senior partner from 1985 to 2006. A natural leader with a charismatic and sensitive personality, throughout his career he accomplished many of his goals, both professionally and personally. In addition to being an excellent professional, he was known for his humility, generosity, good humor and honesty. Horacio E. Beccar Varela, the current managing partner of the firm, remembers him as “an extraordinary person, an ethical mentor in every sense of the word”. He states that Damián’s leadership was transformative, revolutionary: “In many ways, he recast the firm, taking it to a privileged position in the local and international legal world. His talents as a leader and a jurist were such that we aspire to follow his example, in all our actions.” And finally, he adds: “Damián leaves us a great legacy; we hope to honor it every day of our lives.”
Tomás Allende, a partner and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee, recalls Damián as “a person who was able to make complex matters easy.” Always generous with his peers, “he enjoyed seeing us grow in our profession; his door was open every time we were dealing with a problem we didn’t know how to solve. With his prodigious memory and his smile accompanied by a special look, in a few minutes, with great naturalness, he would propose a solution, untying a knot we might have been working on for days”.
Damián obtained his Law degree from Universidad Católica Argentina in 1967, and pursued higher studies at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, USA). From the beginning of his career, he focused his practice on mergers & acquisitions, corporate advice, debt restructuring, project finance, capital markets, and arbitration. The Colegio de Abogados de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires asked him to write its Code of Professional Ethics, still in force today.
He leaves behind his wife Agnès, their five children, and their grandchildren, who will forever remember him with love.
