Episode 51: Ecosystem Zoom In – Spain

We finally deliver a much waited for “Ecosystem Zoom In”, with two massive industry leaders in the country, that together embody both the corporate, the entrepreneurial, and the investment sectors within the region. Francesca Aliverti moderates this session and introduces you to Juan Jimenez Zaballos, the Head of Financial Industry Transformation at Santander Digital (bancosantander.es/) and Ramón Blanco - CEO & Co-Founder Bewater Funds (bewaterfunds.com/es) and the Co-Founder Indexa Capital (indexacapital.com/es). Don’t miss this new installment of this insightful series and get to know how do the digital transformation, the investment landscape, and the harsh health crisis combine together into this European force. More about our guests:Ramón Blanco is a graduate of Business and Law from ICADE (E3) going on to get a Fulbright scholarship to attend Harvard Business School graduating with an MBA. He began his career working in marketing at Unilever, continuing in investment banking at Santander before founding selftrade.es, an online broker whose parent company went public in France. In 2002 Selftrade was sold to Boursorama Banque (part of the SG group with a market cap of 1.000 mill €). In Boursorama Banque he was Deputy CEO (France), President of Onvista Bank (Germany) and Vice President of Selftrade Bank UK. In 2012 he founded etece.com. Ramón has been an investor in numerous startups (idealista.com, 11870.com, sindelantal.com). Besides this Ramon has 15 international rugby caps for Spain and is a Professor of the Financial Markets Masters of Garrigues. Juan Jiménez Zaballos (JJ) is the Head of Financial Industry Transformation within the platforms team. Amongst other responsibilities, he is in charge of building the open banking platform for B2B businesses for the Group worldwide. The combination of Identity, Onboarding, open APIs and ecosystem are the pieces for building up the so-called open platform. Prior to that, Juan was the CIB Corporate Innovation globally for Santander Group. Also held several positions as Chief of staff to the Head of Global Banking and Markets (2013-2014), UK & Switzerland Institutional client’s banker (2011-2012) and Head of Strategy and business development for European Equities (2009-2011). Juan joined the Group in 2009 after playing several senior roles in other Iberian global banks (in Caixa Geral de Depósitos as Chief of Staff to the CEO and in BBVA as Risks, Treasury and Capital Markets manager) and other consulting roles (Arthur Andersen).