When General Electric Co. wanted to finance its sale of a $3 billion commercial real estate mortgage portfolio in Mexico as part of its wind-down of GE Capital, a simple U.S.-style repo wouldn’t do. The more traditional Mexican secured loan market needed a bespoke structure, so the company turned to Latin America specialist Joy Gallup.

“My team got pulled in because of our Mexico expertise,” says Gallup, who also acknowledged that her background in structured finance came in handy when designing a dual-currency seller financing that was the first of its kind in the Mexican market. “Knowing what the market will tolerate, what it is used to seeing and what it will understand” was crucial, Gallup says.