José Ramón Vizmanos (BBVA), a banker with a world who wants to ride the digital and green wave | Companies

José Ramón Vizmanos (Madrid, 1974) reached the top in BBVA’s investment banking area in the Spanish market at the end of last year, in December 2023. It was then that he was appointed head of BBVA CIB Spain. This means joining the management committee of BBVA in Spain and being a member of the global management committee of BBVA CIB.

His career is embedded in the bank of Basque origin. After a short stint at the oil giant Exxon Mobil, he started working at BBVA almost a quarter of a century ago. He started in the area project finance (project financing) and passed through the offices in Madrid, London and New York. He has managed the bank’s relations with Spanish construction companies and later was the global head of infrastructure, as well as leading the corporate banking area in Latin America. In 2019 he was appointed global head of Client Coverage, which means leading the team of global bankers in Spain, Mexico, Europe, Asia, the United States and all Latin American countries. From this position he assumed current responsibility.

This professional development gives him a unique perspective to glimpse how investment banking works in Spain, Europe, the US or Latin America. However, Vizmanos points out that the divergences between all these markets are rather few. “The differences are more than anything cultural. Each client, each sector and each economy are different. But the content, compared with equal perimeters, is the same,” he assures and maintains that the biggest difference he has found in the different positions he has held has been the perimeter of what he had under his leadership, but the business itself has kept.

Upon his return to the strictly Spanish market, a little over half a year ago, he has not found major differences in dealing with Spanish or international funds and companies. “Spanish clients are absolutely international and very globalized. We advise our Spanish clients around the world, so our content within Spain is to advise them both inside and outside the country but also to foreign clients in Spain. There is always a cultural shock, but in the end the Spanish market is very mature, with growth that in many cases comes from outside Spain. For Spanish clients, the focus is more on internationalization than on national growth,” he explains.

The new position does offer him a little more peace of mind, at least in a certain sense. Vizmanos describes the time in which he led corporate banking activity in Latin America as “pretty physically tough.” He remembers that “week yes, week no he crossed the pond.” “Despite how hard it was physically, I remember it as a very enriching time professionally, because I had contact with many clients from different countries, cultures and different types,” he recalls.

Vizmanos came to head BBVA’s investment banking in Spain at another difficult time, in this case for the sector. The 2022 financial year was especially bad for investment banks, which suffered a perfect storm in the form of high interest rates and poor economic prospects, which dried up the operations channel, both mergers and acquisitions (M&A, for its acronym in English) such as IPOs or bond issues and loan closings.

“We are quite optimistic in the national market. Although we come with a low dose of investment, we do believe that there will be a lot of investment. On the one hand, there has been a shortage of investment banking operations because supply and demand were not meeting. That is, the one who wanted to sell had the multiples of the best moments and the one who wanted to buy the lowest multiples of the best moments. Those gaps valuation are closing. Furthermore, everyone in private equity “He continues to raise a lot of money and has a lot of investment capacity,” he summarizes.

Among the levers to encourage this growth, Vizmanos highlights two, which are also in his opinion two of the bank’s greatest competitive advantages, digitalization and the green transition. Regarding the first, he cites the opportunities with data analysis, data management, language models or artificial intelligence, as well as the bank’s leading nature in the adoption of technology. He also highlights the entity’s commitment to sustainability, which has been one of the bank’s strategic priorities since 2019. “Coming from a stage of little investment, sustainability is a brutal disruption where it will require enormous doses of investment. “It is a structural technological disruption that is here to stay, which is going to have a global and immediate impact,” he says.

Beyond this, when he leaves La Vela (the nickname by which the BBVA headquarters in Madrid is known), Vizmanos declares himself in love with Galicia, so he maintains that he is “from Madrid, but with a Galician heart.” He says that whenever he can he escapes to Playa América, in Vigo, from where he likes to travel to the Cíes Islands with his family. He is also fond of running and has already run nine marathons around the world, such as in Chicago, New York and Beijing.

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