The Galician bank Abanca has just opened its first private banking office in Barcelona and hired Jorge Rocafort Lasheras as its director, an executive from Deutsche Bank with extensive experience in the banking sector.
The movement occurs after the closing of the purchase of Targobank Spain, which has allowed Abanca to gain a presence especially in the Mediterranean area. The group thus complements its implementation in Galicia, Castilla y León, Asturias, Euskadi, Madrid and Andalusia.
The new Barcelona office is also part of the interest of Abanca, owned by Venezuelan businessman Juan Carlos Escotet, to strengthen areas such as private banking, in which it has been gaining weight with previous acquisitions.
The new director of private banking in Catalonia has held responsibilities at Banco Urquijo and in the private banking and wealth management areas of Santander, as well as at Credit Suisse. Before his signing, he was the regional director of Deutsche Bank in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and managed a portfolio of nearly 900 million euros.
The new office is located on Passeig de Gràcia, in front of La Pedrera, and Rocafort initially has a team of four people. The very short-term idea is to hire just over a dozen bankers.
The Galician bank already has 18 commercial offices in Catalonia, ten of them Abanca and another eight from Targobank. Now it wants to “make an important qualitative and quantitative leap in Catalonia,” says the entity.
Abanca is part, along with Ibercaja, of the first line of smaller Spanish banks that are not listed on the stock market and to which consolidation potential is attributed. In recent years, it has grown by purchasing Deutsche Bank Portugal, Banco Caixa Geral, Novo Banco España and Bankoa.
