Agroaldea
The new president has obtained the support of the 98,7 percent of the over 230 delegates at the Cajamar General Assembly.
Baamonde is an agricultural engineer and has been general director of Agro-food Cooperatives of Spain until the past 31 of December, when he presented his resignation to head the candidacy for the new Governing Council of Cajamar, which has obtained the endorsement of 98,7 percent of the over 230 delegates who have voted on behalf of the 1,3 million members of the first credit union in Spain.
Once the individual annual accounts and the management report corresponding to 2015, in addition to knowing the Group's consolidated accounts, which closed the year with a net result of 70,2 million euros, this year's assembly was led by the renewal of the governing bodies, and consequently of the presidency of the entity.
A process that started last September, when until now President Juan de la Cruz Cárdenas Rodríguez announced his decision not to stand for reelection after the end of his term, to give way to a new generation that can foster dialogue and understanding with the other Spanish rural savings banks with the aim of a possible future union of the sector.
Once the vote was held and the election of the candidate to the Governing Council was proclaimed, the new president-elect of Cajamar, Eduardo Baamonde, has promised to dedicate all his effort, energy and knowledge to continue contributing to the consolidation and growth of Spanish credit cooperatives in the face of present and future challenges. “The financial sector is in an extremely complex situation, in the face of a slow recovery from a crisis that we can describe as the most serious in the globalized economy, which has caused a default that weighs down our growth, with interest rates at levels for which there is no history, what forces us to diversify our activity and to reinforce our economies of scale”.
The new president of Cajamar has insisted on the importance that Cajamar and the other Spanish rural savings banks continue to grow without losing their particularity as entities close to their clients, committed to the territory and to the service of its partners: “With generosity and humility, as it has always been, with the firm commitment not to lose the essence that has made us what we are”.
In this sense, Baamonde has pointed out that the ability to anticipate, Knowledge of the sector and the opening of Cajamar are fundamental elements that have allowed it to promote an integration process in the field of rural savings banks., “and what is even more important, consolidate a common culture, taking advantage of everyone's knowledge and maintaining commitment to all territories, the proximity with its clients and the provision of services that could never have been carried out without the synergies generated thanks to the integration”.
He then referred to the position held by Cajamar in recent years, which has drawn criticism from other rural savings banks: “Our desire for leadership is not born of pride or any desire for monopoly, born from the belief in our cooperative banking model, a modern and online bank with which it manages large market shares in other countries, fully competitive and integrated into the global economy. It is born from our knowledge of the sector and the economic reality, at the foot of the field, of the uniqueness of the different local production systems existing in our country”.
The new president of Cajamar has also said that Spanish rural savings banks must seek allies outside of Spain: “The internationalization of the economy in general and of our clients in particular, compels us to. In addition, it is necessary to seek alliances with our community colleagues in the defense of credit cooperatives., model that has its reason for being and its space and that is undoubtedly alive enough to adapt to the new times”. For which he insisted on the need to reinforce the political weight of cooperative credit before the community institutions and defend its compatibility in the new scenario of the European banking union.
New Governing Council
The new Governing Council of Cajamar headed by the new President Eduardo Baamonde Noche, they are made up as first vice president Francisco Lorente Brox, Murcian agricultural businessman; Second Vice President José Luis Heredia Celdrán, until now CEO of Cajamar; general secretary María Luisa Trinidad García, Professor of International Law at the University of Almería; and as members Francisco Martínez-Cosentino Justo, president of the Grupo Cosentino; Francisco Góngora Cañizares, President of the Spanish Interprofessional Organization of Fruit and Vegetables (HORTIESPAÑA); Jesus Martinez de Salinas, Valladolid lawyer; María de los Ángeles Pérez Paracuellos, lawyer and court attorney in Valencia; Juan Colomina Figueredo, CEO of the Association of Organizations of Fruit and Vegetable Producers (COEXPHAL), and Bartolomé Viúdez Zurano, current Business Director of Cajamar.