The Board of Directors of the Company, at meeting number 760 held on April 30 2015, decided by unanimously to appoint Bernardo Vargas Gibsone as ISA’s new president. Vargas Gibsone will assume the position starting next July 1st, 2015.
After the resignation of Mr. Luis Fernando Alarcón on past December 19, the Company hired a renowned headhunting firm to carry out a process that took about four months. The firm conducted a thorough and serious review work on profiles that were consistent with the current needs of ISA as multilatina leader. Subsequently, after selecting a small group of applicants, the Board interviewed four of them and decided by unanimously to appoint Vargas Gibsone.

Mr. Vargas has been principal member of ISA’s Board of Directors since 2012; he is also a member and chairman of the New Business Committee of the Company since May 20, 2013 and belongs to the Boards of CTEEP and ISA Capital do Brasil, which has provided him with extensive knowledge of ISA and its companies.

Bernardo Vargas Gibsone is an economist from Universidad de los Andes and holds an MBA from University of Columbia.

As a founding member of independent investment bank Nogal, he has led several major transactions including advisory to Manuelita, Pantaleon, CVCI-Citigroup, Valores Bavaria, SAFRAN French Group, among others.

He also served as chairman of ING Barings in Colombia; he was director of the Andean Region and, subsequently, he was appointed as President and CEO for the merging operations of Barings and ING Colombia. He led the team awarded as best in stock analysis in Colombia for 1995, 1996 and 1997 (Latin Finance) and the best investment bank in Colombia 1997 (Euromoney).

For Avianca, he carried out the first international debt structured placement in Colombia in the corporate sector, and participated in the first syndicated loan for a Latin American city (Bogota). In the area of mergers and acquisitions, Vargas Gibsone participated in transactions for a significant number of relevant corporate clients in Colombia, the region and for the National Government.

He was the founding president of Proexport Colombia, founding president of Fiducoldex and advisor to the Minister of Foreign Trade. In his working life, he was also director of the Department of International Reserves and Foreign Financing for the Central Bank (Banco de la República).