Spain’s AzValor has hired two new partners: Juan Aguirre, as director of Major Accounts, and Javier Barrio, who will be in charge of Execution Only.
Both partners will join Álvaro Guzmán de Lázaro, Fernando Bernad, Beltrán Parages and Sergio Fernández-Pacheco.
Aguirre started his career more than 20 years ago working for Citygroup, AB Asesores and the private banking division of Morgan Stanley, where he held various executive positions at the firm’s Madrid office.
He has also worked providing strategic consulting services and business intelligence to financial sector clients such as KPMG, Bankinter and JP Morgan.
With the appointment of Aguirre, AzValor strengthens its Investor Relations and Business Development team, where he will report to Parages.
Barrio, for his part, has also worked as an analyst at Intermoney and the asset manager of Capital Market. He has also been responsible for sales at the Portuguese bank BPI.
AzValor is expected to announce “new and outstanding” additions in the department of analysis in the coming days.
The asset manager, founded in 2014 by former executives of Bestinver, the asset management arm of Grupo Acciona, saw five of six analysts stepping down to join the new boutique of top asset manager Francisco García Paramés.
The analysts joined azValor with expectations of Paramés being the next addition of the Madrid based asset manager once its non-compete clause expired, two years after his departure from Bestinver. Since Paramés has decided to set up its own investment venture, the analysts had to chose and eventually opted for Paramés.
Carmen Pérez, Iván Chvedine, Juan Huerta de Soto, Juan Cantus and Mingkun Chan all resigned from azValor, with only Jorge Cruz remaining at the asset management firm.
AzValor’s director of trading Mayte Juárez and director of major accounts Santiago Cortezo also joined Paramés from azValor.
Por Funds Society, Madrid
Por Alicia Miguel Serrano