Roberto Eduardo Ponce Romay

Roberto Eduardo Ponce Romay
Invermaster founder and president and CoreCo Central
America Fund partner. Roberto has more than 20 years of
experience in strategic consulting for regional projects and
investment banking, including experience in transactions
worth more than $2 billion, execution of international
growth and expansion projects, portfolio optimization for
business conglomerates, and regional industry consolidation
projects. He has advised owners and investors on corporate
mergers and acquisitions, debt restructuring, corporate
financing, and private capital fundraising. Roberto has
worked with clients in almost all Latin America, especially
Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and the southern United
States. Additionally, he invests in and advises on private
investment funds in the United States and Latin America.
Roberto enjoyed a stellar career at Bain & Company, Inc.,
one of the world’s most prestigious strategic consulting
firms, where he occupied various positions ranging from
analyst to senior manager. He was part of the founding team
for Bain’s offices in Mexico (1997) and Costa Rica (1993), and
was a member of the initial development team for Bain in
Sao Paulo, Brazil (1999).
From 1988 through the present, he has helped manage and
direct several commercial, industrial and service
undertakings – in both the conceptualization stages and dayto-day operations – as well as various nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs).
In Central America, he helped conceptualize and develop
some of the region’s most important groups, including
Grupo Taca, Amaco, and the Paiz and Más por Menos
alliance, as well as the almost full takeover of Coca Cola
bottling plants and the development of the Grupo De Sola
real estate firm, among others.
He has been on the Board of Directors for several
companies, such as a real estate developer, an investment
group, a home accessories manufacturer, and a software
company in Mexico. He is an active partner at CoreCo
Holding, a $50 million fund for private capital investments in
Central America, and serves as external director for the
Board of Directors of a regional hotel chain.
Roberto has frequently been invited to participate in
seminars and conferences for INCAE, Latin Finance and
Euromoney. He has also written columns for magazines such
as Estrategia y Negocios and The Economist. He has an MBA
from INCAE, where he graduated among the top three in his
class. A former airplane pilot, he has also worked as an
aeronautical engineer for the Argentine Air Force and the
Universidad Católica de Córdoba in Argentina.
Federico Zamora Cavallini
José Palomo Rodríguez
Vice-president of Invermaster in the Costa Rica office. Mr.
Zamora has an MBA from INCAE. He was also part of the
founding team for Bain & Company in Costa Rica. From 1988
through the present, he has participated in the management
and direction of several undertakings, commercial
businesses, industrial companies and services, as well as
Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs). The former both
during the conceptualization stages as well as for day-to-day
operations.
Jose works as a manager in the Guatemala office.
Throughout his tenure at Invermaster he has led projects in
Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Jose has
worked on projects that include strategic consulting,
mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance
transactions.
Jose has experience in industries such as manufacturing,
banking, retail, pharmaceuticals, real estate and restaurants.
Throughout his career in consulting he has developed
franchising strategies, company portfolio analyses and
market maps. In addition to his experience in consulting,
Jose has advised clients in corporate finance transactions in
the real estate, retail, and restaurant sectors. He has proven
financial valuation experience in several industries, most
notably, in the financial industry, where he led the valuation
of a prominent banking group with operations throughout
Central America.
Prior to joining Invermaster, Jose worked at the International
Investment Group, an investment fund in New York City,
where he assisted an emerging market bond trader and
gained experience developing financial models. Most
recently, he has gained experience working in Europe as an
intern in Bank Gutmann, where he focused his efforts on
their private equity practice.
José holds an MBA from IESE Business School and a
bachelor’s degree in business administration from the
University of Notre Dame, where he specialized in finance
and economics.
Federico is currently the second vice president of the Costa
Rican Chamber of Industries and president of the Costa
Rican Support Foundation for Micro and Medium
Enterprises, an initiative of the Costa Rican Chamber of
Industries. He also represents the Costa Rican private sector
before the Development Banking System Advisory Board and
other strategic decision-making bodies, including
FUNDECOOPERACION, an initiative established during the
1992 Río Summit.
At Invermaster he has worked on several strategic regional
consulting projects, in addition to corporate valuations,
mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance projects in
the security, wealth management, financial services,
insurance, and real estate industries, among others. He has
also helped create and structurally reorganize a region-wide
private capital fund and collaborated on establishing
regulations for the use of public funds to drive seed capital
in Costa Rica.
Lorena Grundy Castaños
Ana Cecilia Paz de Castañeda
Lorena has more than 13 years of professional experience in
the financial field. She has been involved in projects in
several industries including real estate and housing
construction, banking and financial institutions, metals and
mining, and utilities. Before joining Invermaster she was vice
president and business manager at Amba Research, a firm
providing financial analyses for international investment
banks, investment funds, and hedge funds. She led the
company's largest global account, one of the world’s top 10
investment banks, and headed a team of more than 30
people. She also worked in research and financial analysis,
building and maintaining financial models for more than 200
Latin American and some 50 other emerging market firms,
along with 20 North American companies.
Ana Cecilia has worked as business support manager since
2010 for both the Guatemala and Costa Rica offices. She has
more than 13 years of professional experience heading
commercial departments and developing and executing
marketing, sales and customer service strategies in different
industries. Before coming to Invermaster, she was the
commercial director for more than five years at one of the
largest real estate developers in Guatemala and El Salvador,
where she developed winning sales and marketing strategies
for commercial, industrial, residential and office projects. She
led the integration, structuring, establishment and
documentation of departmental systems, controls, goals and
policies and headed a team of more than 30 external and
internal collaborators.
She was responsible for the
corporation’s brand and customer equity creation, evolving
and implementing corporate strategies, managing public
relations and marketing budgets, and meeting profitability
goals. She also acted as facilitator for one of the group’s
pillars, helping to implement the “Four Disciplines of
Execution” throughout the corporation. She served on the
committee charged with developing the corporate ethics code
and defining the corporate vision and mission statements.
Previously she worked for more than six years as commercial
manager in the industrial sector with clients in different areas
such as food and beverage, agribusiness, supplies, raw
material, etc., where she gained experience in handling
regional corporate accounts and negotiating. Ana Cecilia
studied for an MBA (pending specialization) at the Universidad
Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, where she also graduated
cum laude in international relations.
Prior to this, she worked for more than 5 years in the stock
exchange and securities market in Bolivia, where she was an
investment analyst for the Superintendencia de Pensiones,
Valores y Seguros (Superintendency of Pensions, Securities
and Insurance), a securities market analyst at the Treasury
Department, and an operations director at the Bolivian Stock
Exchange. Additionally, she has ample experience in client
services and team leadership as well training. Lorena has a
master's in business administration (MBA) with an emphasis
in economics and finance from Incae Business School. She
also has a graduate degree in Business Administration from
the Universidad Católica Boliviana.
Valeria Araya Yuditskaya
Juan Diego Berger Crespo
Valeria has participated in strategy and business mapping for
construction wholesalers and retailers, corporate
restructuring for logistics and security companies, valuations
for retailers, logistics and security firms and call centers, and
capital fundraising for call centers and credit card and real
estate companies. She is on the team charged with comanaging Invermaster's private capital investments in Costa
Rica.
Juan Diego has led and executed successful projects
involving strategy consultancy, corporate restructuring,
corporate finance, regional market mapping, business
portfolio optimization, mergers and acquisitions and
advanced valuation models for several conglomerates and
prestigious companies in Latin America. He has honed his
consultancy skills in such diverse sectors as hospitality, retail,
call centers, security, energy, banking, financial services,
logistics, agroindustry, and real estate. He has also
participated in negotiations involving financial restructuring,
business analysis and valuation, and M&A buyer- and sellerside transactions in Central America, Mexico and Colombia.
Before joining the Invermaster team, he gained invaluable
marketing and finance experience in telecommunications
and banking, working with well-known multinational
companies. At Philip Morris International, he developed the
company’s main brands and created value by increasing the
market share. At Citi, as financial analyst, he developed ways
of improving services and gained knowledge of the FX
market in Central America. Finally, at Union Credit Bank in
Miami, he helped the wealth management team increase
the client´s Latin American portfolio by offering financial
products such as fixed income and equity investments in the
U.S. A cum Laude graduate in business administration with
minors in finance and entrepreneurship from Universidad
Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, he has also taken
advanced finance courses from Harvard University and the
London School of Economics.
Before coming to Invermaster, Valeria worked as an offshore
analyst in Deutsche Bank’s Fixed Income Department in
London, where she covered companies located in Russia, the
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and the Middle East, doing
analysis
and
financial
modeling
for
banking,
telecommunications, mining, petroleum and gas industries,
among others.
She has also worked in the Sociedad Administradora de
Fondos de Inversión (investment funds manager, or S.A.F.I.)
of the Securities Exchange, as assistant in specialized
portfolios for financial investment funds. Her experience also
includes the creation of business plans for micro, small and
medium enterprises in Costa Rica.
Valeria studied business administration with an emphasis in
finance at La Salle University. She is currently pursuing her
MBA with an emphasis in finance, and is fluent in Spanish,
English and Russian.
Pablo Andrés Tager Penados
Ana Cristina Arias Fuentes
Senior analyst at Invermaster Guatemala, Pablo has
participated in strategic projects and financial valuation of
enterprises in hotel management, security, real estate,
coffee exportation, and retail, among other sectors. He is
also Invermaster’s financial manager and head of the
accounting department and administrative team,
responsible for preparing financial statements and monthly
presentations at the board meetings of the company and its
affiliates.
Ana has worked on strategy, valuation, corporate finance and
private equity projects for retail, security, logistics,
construction, real estate, and other companies. She has
focused on valuations by multiples and has conducted
market research and helped create strategy presentations.
Before joining the Invermaster team in 2012, Pablo worked
on various management and administration projects,
including business development and commercialization at
Productos de Peten, a forest product export company, where
he implemented a new sales strategy for extending them to
El Salvador and Honduras. He also worked in the real estate
management department of Spectrum Inmobiliaria, a
leading Guatemalan real estate firm. His leadership
expertise, stemming from his days as student association
leader, includes the coordination of multidisciplinary teams.
Pablo studied in the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala,
where he graduated as an industrial engineer in 2008; he
also studied for a master’s degree in finance from the EADA
Business School in Barcelona, Spain in 2012.
She provides support for private equity projects, specifically
by creating investment teasers and pitch books for a diverse
group of companies. She has been responsible for creating
manuals on environmental and social policies for the private
equity funds with which Invermaster has worked.
Before joining Invermaster, she worked in a family business
where she primarily provided support and performed
administrative functions.
In 2011 she participated in an entrepreneurial fair hosted by
the Universidad Nacional of Costa Rica, where she won first
prize in the environmental category. She holds a degree in
business administration from the Universidad Nacional.
Michelle Salas de Castro
Juliana Morales Abreu
Michelle has worked on developing and managing
commercial and residential construction projects, and has
helped create and manage a restaurant. She has also worked
at the Universal de Idiomas and ILISA language schools,
giving administrative support and creating strategies for
their growth and merger.
Juliana works as a junior analyst at Invermaster Costa Rica.
During her time at the company, Juliana has worked on
corporate finance, valuation and private equity projects. She
has prepared market research in the retail and logistics
sectors and provided management support for real estate
projects. Furthermore, Juliana has had a fundamental role in
the environmental and social due diligence of various
companies in different sectors. She has also contributed in
the area of public relations, promoting Invermaster by
organizing activities with major Costa Rican investors.
She has experience in business creation, being involved in
every phase from feasibility studies and the creation process
to the administration of each business. She has specialized in
strategic projects, logistics, finances, human resources
management, marketing and sales in each of the companies
where she has worked.
Michelle studied business administration at the Universidad
de Costa Rica and interior design at the Universidad Veritas,
and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in project
management (MBA).
Prior to joining Invermaster, Juliana worked as a banking
intern in Costa Rica. She held a position in the marketing
department of Scotiabank where her goal was to improve
customer service. She also worked at Bansol at the
exchange rate desk, where she was responsible for sending
daily transaction reports to Costa Rica’s Central Bank.
Juliana graduated magna cum laude in business
administration with a specialization in finance and a minor in
economics from American University in Washington, DC.
Juliana also attended the International University of Monaco
during her 2011 spring semester.
GUATEMALA
Diagonal 6,12-42 Z. 10
Edif. Design Center Torre 2 Of 503
Guatemala 01010, Guatemala
+502 2261-8965
COSTA RICA
200 N Escuela España
San Antonio de Belén
Heredia, Costa Rica
+506 2239-0391
MIAMI
2121 SW 3rd Avenue
Suite 200
Miami, Florida 33129
+1 (305) 677-3725