Salvador Juncadella announced his retirement Wednesday from Morgan Lewis in Miami after being a force for decades on the international general counsel scene.

His announcement produced an audible sigh in the audience at a luncheon of what started as the International In-House Counsel Group and was renamed the Juncadella Corporate Counsel Group in his honor.

Juncadella, 89, was a Batista-era graduate of the University of Havana and a young attorney at Cuba's largest law firm working on Esso's legal work when the Cuban revolution expropriated the oil company's properties. When Juncadella fled with six children to Miami in 1962, the future Exxon Mobil hired him as an in-house counsel doing international work.

While Juncadella was never licensed to practice law in Florida, his focus was on international business and helping corporate counsel build their careers. At Morgan Lewis, he worked as a consultant on business and finance matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. But Juncadella is perhaps best known for his behind-the-scenes networking role opening professional doors for GCs.

“He's been like a clearinghouse for professional opportunities for the whole regional counsel community,” said Mark Zelek, a former Miami managing partner at Morgan Lewis. “People are always telling me how Salvador helped me get this job or recommended him for this committee or made her aware of an opportunity.”

Juncadella served as general counsel of Esso Inter-America Inc., Exon's regional office in Coral Gables. He founded the corporate counsel group as South Florida grew to become the Latin American headquarters for hundreds of multinational companies.

The group's first meeting of 10 members was in 1992 at Le Festival restaurant in Coral Gables, which went out of business years ago. The membership has since grown to 400 lawyers from 300 companies with regular luncheons and a seminar every two years. Members now stretch from the Americas to Singapore.

Juncadella, a former president of the Inter-American Bar Association, “created opportunities for people to get together and share best practices,” Zelek said. “He's been the leading light for Latin American counsel.”

Exercising a quiet power, the soft-spoken Juncadella “gets people to do things they might not otherwise do. He's very persuasive in a very gentlemanly way.”

Two awards illustrate the breadth of his career achievements. The University of Miami School of Law named him its 1998 Lawyer of the Americas based on his contributions to international and inter-American law. He was also named an honorary member of the Lima Bar Association.

“No matter where you go in Latin America, every lawyer knows Salvador Juncadella, either knows him or knows of his sterling reputation,” said Zelek, who is assuming the group's leadership role.