Alejandra Kindlan, to date director of research, public policy and corporate relations at Banco Santander, became the first president in the history of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB) on Tuesday.
The General Assembly of the Banking Business Council unanimously approved his appointment to a four-year term, replacing Jose Maria Roldan, who became president of the Banking Employers Association in 2014 and resigned a year ago to run for re-election.
Kindelán has publicly thanked herself for the support all entities have received and the honor to be represented, while praising the work and “legacy” of her predecessor in office, “which underpinned an important transformation of the Assembly during his tenure”.
Kindelán’s nomination, as banking employers recall, was submitted to the association by the AEB General Council, on the consensus proposal of the association’s five largest banks with presence in this body: Santander, BBVA, Sabadell, Bankinter and Deutsche Bank.
With a degree in Economics and Political Science from Wellesley College (Massachusetts, USA), Kindlan holds graduate studies at IESE (Madrid) and INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) business schools.
She was born in Caracas in 1971 and has lived in the United Kingdom and the United States, with three children.
Prior to joining Santander, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank. In 1994, he joined the Central Hispanic Studies Department – which later merged with Santander – to work on macroeconomic analysis of the world economy.
In 2001, she was appointed Head of the Department of Studies and Public Policy of the Santander Group. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Santander Consumer Finance (SCF), Santander Consumer Finance in Europe, and is the Executive Vice President of Business for the OECD, a sector advisory board.
Likewise, Kindelán was Director of Santander Argentina, and among her responsibilities, prior to her arrival at AEB, was coordinating Santander’s position on matters such as financial regulation, macroeconomics and financial analysis, in collaboration with local teams.
From his position, he was also responsible for coordinating relations with institutional interest groups and Santander’s presence in international fora.
Between 2006 and 2012, he chaired the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Banking Union, and is currently a member of the Steering Committee on Effective Regulation of the Institute of International Finance, as well as on various advisory boards in academic and economic entities. in Spain (Fedea, School of Industrial Regulation, Foundation for Financial Studies).
AEB is the association representing the interests of a large part of Spanish banks, including Santander, BBVA, Sabadell and Bankinter, but not those of CaixaBank and the banks created by the old banks, which still have their own representation at the mint.
Unlike all of his male predecessors in the AEB presidency, Kindelán comes directly from one of the employer’s partner banks and not from management or the Bank of Spain.
For his part, the outgoing president thanked the banks affiliated with the Arab Bank for Banks for the confidence they had placed in him over the past few years, and expressed his satisfaction at being able to represent the sector in this period faced by the Spanish banking system. ”, after the outbreak of the global financial crisis and the recession of the Spanish economy, “it was one of the most complex and severe phases in its modern history”.
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