Pros
Risk Management structure and Governance is par excellence Project Finance is best of breed Colleagues in Madrid HQ for the most part highly competent and very hard working Good compensation packages outside of Spain
Kontras
Still too tolerant of very bad behaviour by “star execs”; people that wouldn’t have lasted a day at JPM, Barclays or Citibank due to bullying or sexual harassment, for example. The bank rather pay off women upon women and have them sign NDAs rather than deal with the perps. Hard to break C-suite ranks if not a Spanish male Risk Management systems deplorable, had to manage many risk via spreadsheets The republic-style of management meant that each region had multiple layers of exec and risk committees to contend with for any single deal - highly onerous and nearly impossible to streamline