Edgar Fernández Vidal

“I founded and managed four start-ups at the same time -each company in a different industry, all of them in Castellón (Spain). After my university studies, before starting the Master in Management, I worked for 4 months as an intern at an academic research center (LEE UJI) as a Data Analyst. During the Master at IE, I have been working as a researcher for Market Trends (online reviews) of the Francisco Marroquin University of Guatemala, where I currently analyze the financial markets and the economy of countries all around the world.”

“As an Equity Researcher, my functions will be to analyze companies to find investment opportunities. Amiral Gestion is an independent asset management company wholly owned by its directors and staff. The company manages more than EUR 3.0 billion on behalf of institutional investors, private banks, family offices and individuals, through several institutional mandates and six mutual funds. The company follows the Value Investing principles of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet. They are -kind of- contrarian investors looking for value where no one is paying attention.”

“This is the funny part of the history. There was no job opportunity, there were no open positions, I created it. Amiral Gestion came to Madrid in October 2016 for their Annual Investors Conference and I went there even though I wasn’t even invited. During Q&A, I asked if they had financial positions in Infotel, a very small French company that I knew. At the end of the conference, during the cocktail, a junior manager from Amiral approached me asking why I knew this company and what I thought about it. We talked over an hour about several companies and about Spanish and Italian banks, and at the end he introduced me to the senior manager, who offered me the opportunity to work in Amiral Gestion. After this, I went to yet another Investors conference to get to meet more managers, this time I spoke about financial perspectives in Asia as well as books on value-investing I had read with other Amiral employees. Finally, in March, I started the formal process. During my last interview, in Paris, almost half of the team already knew who I was, and it is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons why I got the job: I was able to position myself as an expert among experts even before getting hired.”

“As I already said, I created my job opportunity but the Careers department helped me a lot since the beginning. They taught how to make a good impression with my CV (it was always a disaster with no order at all) and how to draft proper Cover Letters, how and when to send emails to recruiters and finally how to prepare for the interviews. Even when you think everything is under your control, you must ask for advice, and at Talent and Careers, they have the best professionals in each industry.”