“I leave with the objectives of the merger fulfilled.” José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, better known as “Goiri”, today left the presidency of the largest bank in the country by surprise and entrusted the decision to those closest to him with those words. Born in Bilbao and with a track record that is difficult to replicate, the banker turned 71 on February 4 (he was born in 1954) and has spent more than half his life linked to a sector, the financial sector, in which he has had to live and manage three legendary mergers: he was in the senior management of BBV founded with the union of BV and Vizcaya, he was number two in the later BBVA (it annexed the A of Argentaria) and in 2020 linked Bankia’s integration into CaixaBank, after having assumed eight years ago the mission of reviving the nationalized bank when its life was already spent outside the industry after an arid departure from BBVA, which it helped to forge.
Respected by everyone in the sector, with a kind, conciliatory character and listening to his team, the Basque executive became president of CaixaBank in 2020 following the merger with Bankia that he led at the time. In his first public intervention, he defended the operation as the “best alternative” to recover the public aid of 24,069 million provided by the Government to the Bankia group.
“With this integration, taxpayers are better off than before,” he explained, given the opportunity to create a “bank with greater robustness and sustainable profitability in the future” when the crisis caused by the pandemic and 0% interest rates cornered the sector. At that time, the equally defensive merger of Liberbank with Unicaja took place and the failed negotiation of BBVA and Sabadell took place.
Goirigolzarri went from managing a bank with 218,455 million euros in assets, 8 million clients and 15,947 employees, to presiding over a group with 664,027 million in assets, 23.4 million clients in Spain and Portugal and a workforce of 51,536 workers. He decided to continue leading the project together with Gonzalo Gortázar, CEO of the bank, to help in the assembly of both entities, although his functions were limited and some of his closest collaborators decided to leave the team, such as José Sevilla, today president of Unicaja and then “number two” in Bankia. Although he has held the executive presidency, the Communication, Secretariat and Internal Audit departments depended on him. The limitation of functions was established due to the ECB’s obsession with eliminating executive presidencies to avoid an accumulation of power in an executive.
Passionate about Athletic Bilbao, his career has been linked to banking since its beginnings. He studied Economics and Business at the University of Deusto, and in 1978 he began working at Banco Bilbao, where he rose in responsibilities until in 1992 he became its general director. By then, the bank had already merged with Vizcaya (in 1988).
In 2000, the integration of this entity (BBV) with Argentaria, chaired by Francisco González, took place, which ended up forming the current BBVA. Goirigolzarri was at the forefront of the group’s great expansion and internationalization throughout Latin America and the United States, with the successful purchase of the Mexican Bancomer that several decades later built half of the account in BBVA. González put him in charge of managing the group’s business as CEO in 2001, but in 2009 the Basque banker retired from BBVA due to permanent disagreements between the two. He had previously seen other former BBV leave the entity, including Emilio Ybarra, who was co-president with González in the merger, following the outbreak of the Jersey funds scandal.
The banker left with a compensation of 69 million and the desire to stop his more than long and fruitful professional career. But the crisis breaks out, the country is in a double recession and doubts about the health of the banks penalize doubly. Much of the attention was focused on Bankia, and its inability to meet the growing regulatory burden of provisions, imposed in successive decrees by the Ministry of Economy to dispel any doubts about the vulnerability of the bank.
Mariano Rajoy’s Executive called him in 2012 to take over at the head of the bank from Rodrigo Rato, former economic vice president of a Government also from the PP, and asked him to solve the country’s biggest problem. Goirigolzarri accepted the challenge out of a sense of public service, with an entity that ended up nationalized with an injection of 24,069 million. He encountered an angry clientele, who had seen their investment become volatile when they went to the bank’s IPO or acquired its preferred ones.
He also found himself with a dejected workforce, when part of the solution was, precisely, to undertake the largest ERE experienced in Spanish banking. And, in a more personal way, the Government set him a salary of just 500,000 euros for having public aid from the bank, when any equivalent executive earns millions in similar entities in Spain and outside the country.
In 2020, when the Covid crisis once again urged mergers and the Government saw the union with CaixaBank as the best way to protect public aid, Bankia had turned the difficult situation around, even anticipating the strategic objectives that had been marked. Now he is stepping aside with CaixaBank with record profits and the promise of a macro-dividend of 12,000 million. He makes way, tired according to those close to him after an intense career, when he launches his new strategic plan in the scenario of falling rates.
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