My responsibilities
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Work Experience
I worked at General Electric -GE- for a decade (I even achieved a prize my way of handling business, take a look at the GE website at that moment:here).
GE ACCESS
The beginning was as commercial assistant ("Customer Service Representative") in a company called Access Graphics that at that moment was just acquired by GE. The company was sold later to AVNET
GE Access was a "master reseller" of IT products, mainly internet servers from SUN Microsystems (later on adquired by Oracle) and graphic workstations from SGI. The products were sold to Channel Partners (IT resellers) around Europe at credit (30/60/90 days).
A few months later I joined the financial department of that company in the Credit & Collections area, initially as responsible for Iberian and Greek Market and finally as Team leader at PanEuropean level.
Our customers were reselling the IT products within a complete IT project to the end users and thus their value was basically in the engineering services and the IT knowledge. The hardware were rather expensive -specially in comparison with the financial size of our medium customer- so the credit department was creating imaginative ways to release the sale without compromising the solvency of Access.
In Access I enjoyed the frenzy of the Y2K bug and the first internet bubble (and the burst later on); and I learnt the payment differences between northeuropeans and southeuropeans :) ; the importance of well explained definitions for any concept within my SixSigma projects and .. wel.. I discovered the "GE way" on management.
GE CAPITAL
After 5 years and with the aim of changing life, both in personal and professional manner, I moved back to Spain: GE Equipment Finance (aka GE Capital), a small company (at that moment only 6 people in Spain) providing lease solutions to SMEs in Spain. GE EEF needed a Risk Analyst, plug-and-play.
That meant the change from the rainy Amsterdam to the sunny Barcelona, from a company over 100 employees to less than 10, from specialization to learning by doing.
In GE Capital I learnt the ropes of the lease industry; the differences between US GAAP and Spanish GAAP related to leasing, the importance of a extended and reliable fair market value database for equipment in lease, and much more in that area; but I also learnt other skills within a 12 month course called Sales&Risk: Creating Client Value, Strategic Thinking, Presentation Skills, ...
GE Equipment merged (internally) with GE Fleet, dedicated to long term rental of cars, and I became team leader for the risk Analyst group, what allowed me to see the differences of business targets and portfolio worthiness on equipment lease and fleet rental.
SUDLEASING
Again, after 5 years I decided to move forward and joined a German group (LBBW) as Managing Director for the Spanish Subsidiary of their leasing arm: Sudleasing España E.F.C., a leasing company focus on SMEs and working specially with German providers of equipment.
Within Sudleasing my responsibilities increased from the risk area into the administration, accountancy, IT, financing, human resources, .... almost everything except the commercial area. There I learned the special requirements of a regulated financial entity, the intensive reporting system and conservative approach of the Bank of Spain. There I suffered also the crisis of the construction sector (first) and the Spanish economy (later) and how the legal system sometimes is not quick enough to protect the interest of the legal owners.
The company stopped commercial activity and reduced the headcount, so I remain as sole managing director in charge of the release of the banking license, the merge of the renting and leasing companies and the overview of the distressed portfolio .
LOANBOOK CAPITAL
Once the leasing portfolio was cleaned and the company downsized; I started to look for new horizons. The fintech looked the obvious sector as it included my two passions (finance and technology), so I started to study the players, the regulation, the business model,.. and I found LoanBook, the leading firm in the crowdlending or P2P lending to SMEs in Spain. Perfect!
Within LoanBook my responsibility was improve the categorization of loans within the risk function and how to improve efficiency of the credit analysis and collections procedure.
The success of the company meant that we run out of the raw material (money to lend), so the board decided to stop lending and concentrate on the recovery of existing portfolio. I was made redundant as the rest of the employees and daily management was transferred to a third party.
ALCON HEALTHCARE
The sudden closing of the fintech experience made me think about going back to the international corporate arena. I joined Alcon just when this company announced the spin-off from pharma group Novartis.
In Alcon my responsibility was in the credit and cash area for Iberian market (Spain and Portugal) with 45mio AR portfolio and 5000+ customers handled by a dedicated team of 9 people. The need for integrate the process within a new ERP (SAP), reorganize tasks around the need for reducing DSO and merge 2 countries and 2 business lines into a single O2C process were the main focus prior to the final transfer to a share service center.
GE ACCESS
The beginning was as commercial assistant ("Customer Service Representative") in a company called Access Graphics that at that moment was just acquired by GE. The company was sold later to AVNET
GE Access was a "master reseller" of IT products, mainly internet servers from SUN Microsystems (later on adquired by Oracle) and graphic workstations from SGI. The products were sold to Channel Partners (IT resellers) around Europe at credit (30/60/90 days).
A few months later I joined the financial department of that company in the Credit & Collections area, initially as responsible for Iberian and Greek Market and finally as Team leader at PanEuropean level.
Our customers were reselling the IT products within a complete IT project to the end users and thus their value was basically in the engineering services and the IT knowledge. The hardware were rather expensive -specially in comparison with the financial size of our medium customer- so the credit department was creating imaginative ways to release the sale without compromising the solvency of Access.
In Access I enjoyed the frenzy of the Y2K bug and the first internet bubble (and the burst later on); and I learnt the payment differences between northeuropeans and southeuropeans :) ; the importance of well explained definitions for any concept within my SixSigma projects and .. wel.. I discovered the "GE way" on management.
GE CAPITAL
After 5 years and with the aim of changing life, both in personal and professional manner, I moved back to Spain: GE Equipment Finance (aka GE Capital), a small company (at that moment only 6 people in Spain) providing lease solutions to SMEs in Spain. GE EEF needed a Risk Analyst, plug-and-play.
That meant the change from the rainy Amsterdam to the sunny Barcelona, from a company over 100 employees to less than 10, from specialization to learning by doing.
In GE Capital I learnt the ropes of the lease industry; the differences between US GAAP and Spanish GAAP related to leasing, the importance of a extended and reliable fair market value database for equipment in lease, and much more in that area; but I also learnt other skills within a 12 month course called Sales&Risk: Creating Client Value, Strategic Thinking, Presentation Skills, ...
GE Equipment merged (internally) with GE Fleet, dedicated to long term rental of cars, and I became team leader for the risk Analyst group, what allowed me to see the differences of business targets and portfolio worthiness on equipment lease and fleet rental.
SUDLEASING
Again, after 5 years I decided to move forward and joined a German group (LBBW) as Managing Director for the Spanish Subsidiary of their leasing arm: Sudleasing España E.F.C., a leasing company focus on SMEs and working specially with German providers of equipment.
Within Sudleasing my responsibilities increased from the risk area into the administration, accountancy, IT, financing, human resources, .... almost everything except the commercial area. There I learned the special requirements of a regulated financial entity, the intensive reporting system and conservative approach of the Bank of Spain. There I suffered also the crisis of the construction sector (first) and the Spanish economy (later) and how the legal system sometimes is not quick enough to protect the interest of the legal owners.
The company stopped commercial activity and reduced the headcount, so I remain as sole managing director in charge of the release of the banking license, the merge of the renting and leasing companies and the overview of the distressed portfolio .
LOANBOOK CAPITAL
Once the leasing portfolio was cleaned and the company downsized; I started to look for new horizons. The fintech looked the obvious sector as it included my two passions (finance and technology), so I started to study the players, the regulation, the business model,.. and I found LoanBook, the leading firm in the crowdlending or P2P lending to SMEs in Spain. Perfect!
Within LoanBook my responsibility was improve the categorization of loans within the risk function and how to improve efficiency of the credit analysis and collections procedure.
The success of the company meant that we run out of the raw material (money to lend), so the board decided to stop lending and concentrate on the recovery of existing portfolio. I was made redundant as the rest of the employees and daily management was transferred to a third party.
ALCON HEALTHCARE
The sudden closing of the fintech experience made me think about going back to the international corporate arena. I joined Alcon just when this company announced the spin-off from pharma group Novartis.
In Alcon my responsibility was in the credit and cash area for Iberian market (Spain and Portugal) with 45mio AR portfolio and 5000+ customers handled by a dedicated team of 9 people. The need for integrate the process within a new ERP (SAP), reorganize tasks around the need for reducing DSO and merge 2 countries and 2 business lines into a single O2C process were the main focus prior to the final transfer to a share service center.
