Jose-Maria Fernandez, M.B.A., M.F., is managing partner at Altamar, an investment management firm, where he focuses on the design, fundraising, and management of portfolios of investments in companies. In this position, he is also member of the investment committee of Alta Life Sciences, a biotech venture fund with a Spanish and European focus launched in 2016.
Prior to his current position, Fernandez was the director general of the Treasury at Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. In this position, he was the treasurer and chief financial officer of Spain. His responsibilities included the issuance and management of Spain’s public debt, its risk and liability management, the kingdom’s treasury and cash operations, the financing of Spain’s regional public issuers, the treasury’s IT and resources management, and a multiplicity of other public sector related financing programs.
Fernandez was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Investment Bank from 2014 through 2016 and a board member of CESCE (Spain’s export credit agency). In this position, he evaluated and approved hundreds of investments and financing operations in Europe and across the globe.
Between 2010 and 2013, Fernandez worked at MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering developing securitization models for biotech R&D portfolios and for Kendall Rho LLC, a finance innovation firm. In addition to this, he has substantial experience in capital markets. Prior to this, he ran the Debt Capital Markets Global Origination department for sovereigns, supranational and development agencies at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. He worked in, and led for three years, the Funding and Debt Management Department for the Spanish Treasury. Fernandez has also worked for the World Bank as a securities and debt capital markets expert, consulting for emerging country governments on topics related to public debt issuance and financial management strategy.
Fernandez holds an M.B.A. degree from MIT Sloan (Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership), a master’s in finance degree from the London Business School, a master’s in portfolio management degree from I.E.B., and bachelor’s degree in economics and business from CUNEF (Madrid). He was appointed state economist and trade expert of the Spanish General Government in 1997.