The deal-value lawyer
From Asturias to the sharp end of banking: Carolina Albuerne, a partner at Uría Menéndez, tops the league tables and has built an entire career “at home”, between regulation and headline M&A
by ilaria iaquinta
In 2025, Carolina Albuerne’s name started cropping up regularly in business-law league tables. A partner at Uría Menéndez, she was climbing the rankings compiled by Mergermarket and TTR Data, appearing ahead of some of the market’s best-known long-standing figures, from Albarrán to Del Val.
The numbers explain part of the story. Albuerne ranks third in Mergermarket’s deal-value table, driven by three major mandates: advising Banco Santander on the sale of a Spain-based portfolio of performing, mortgage-secured loans to Goldman Sachs and Allianz; advising on the sale to Erste Group Bank of 49% of Santander Bank Polska SA; and advising Banco Sabadell on the sale of TSB Banking Group. Taken together, those transactions total €9.971bn. TTR Data, meanwhile, places her top of the women’s ranking by total deal value (€10.090bn) and second in the overall ranking for 2025.
The figures have put her firmly in the spotlight. But to understand the person behind the deal value, you have to step away from the tables and into her office. Her story begins a long way from big-ticket transactions. It begins in Asturias. Albuerne was born — as she puts it — “in a tiny little village”. For a while, her plan was simple: study law close to home. For a strong student without a clearly defined vocation, it felt like “the obvious solution”, she recalls. Then a teacher encouraged her to look further afield. That “further” became Madrid. She went to ICADE, taking the double degree in Law and Business — less common at the time — and it was there, she says, that she understood in one go what business law really was: deals built on technique, structure and strategy.
From that point on, she insists, there was no Plan B. “By second year I knew I wanted to do corporate,” she says. She didn’t interview for investment banking or consulting. Nor did she interview at other firms. “I wanted to do this, and I wanted to do it here”. “Here” meant Uría Menéndez. She joined thanks to a professor, Rafael Sebastián — a partner at the firm — who opened the door. She started even before graduating; by her final year she was already working afternoons in the office. “I’ve built my whole career here,” she says. At Uría, she adds, that is not unusual; it’s the model: a home-grown firm, with early-years rotations and a training culture that still feels like a craft. Asked why she has stayed, she answers simply: “It’s my home”.
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