Status of LHCb

The LHC machine has a unique potential for the study of CP violation and rare decays in the heavy-flavor sector due to the combination of a large $b\bar{b}$ and $c\bar{c}$ production cross-section and high luminosity. Even at an average luminosity of L = 2x10$^{31}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, well below the machine design value, 10$^{12} b\bar{b}$ pairs are produced per year at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 14 TeV, offering interesting perspectives in the search for New Physics with an approach complementary to those of the general purpose experiments. This complementary approach consists in measuring quantum corrections in the decay of already known particles specially in flavor-changing neutral-current (FCNC) transitions, and looking for deviations from the Standard Model (SM) predictions.