Juan Carlos Escotet

Juan Carlos Escotet was born in Madrid in 1959.[2] Escotet, one of eight immigrant children from Spain, first began to work doing errands for a bank in Venezuela in 1976. He was in night school while working full-time at Banco Union.[3] He later earned a master's degree in professional management science from the University of Miami.[1][2]

Following his schooling, Escotet worked as an executive for Sociedad Financiera Latinoamericana, working towards his own financial group.[3] In the 1990s, Escotet gathered enough money to buy out Venezuelan financial institutions going through the banking crisis and set up his own Panama establishment.[3] Escotet founded Banesco and in 2000, merged Banco Union with his company.[3][1] He owns other branches in Miami, Panama, Colombia, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.[3] In 2015, he acquired NCG Banco, the current Abanca in Spain.[4]