Award-winning team loses head of IR to commercial finance division
Elena Avila, Amadeus’ IR director of nearly four years, has announced she is moving on to a new role as head of the commercial finance team.
She is succeeded by Cristina Fernández, who joins the travel reservations group from private equity firm CVC Partners where she has served as an investment director since 2006. A London Business School graduate, Fernández previously worked for KPMG and Citigroup’s investment banking division in New York and London.
Avila was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley when she was hired to set up the Amadeus IR team from scratch. ‘When I joined Amadeus just before its IPO in April 2010, I was given the mission of building the IR team ‒ it’s been a very exciting and challenging experience,’ she tells IR Magazine. Just one year later, Amadeus won its first IR Magazine Award for best IR for an IPO.
The company, which started in 1990 as a privately held venture backed by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS, first went public in 1999, before being acquired by private equity firms BC Partners and Cinven, and relisted on the Bolsa de Madrid exchange four years ago.
The 2010 offering successfully raised €1.3 bn ($1.7 bn) despite difficult market conditions, amid credit rating downgrades in Greece, Portugal and Spain and at a challenging time for travel companies in general, following a volcanic eruption in Iceland that led to the cancellation of more than 100,000 flights.
Avila and her team gained multiple recognition at further global and European awards, ranking at number six in the 2013 IR Magazine Global Top 50 and taking home the accolades for best company in the technology software & services sector at the IR Magazine Awards ‒ Europe in 2012 and 2013, as well as best in Spain in 2013.
‘Today I move on to a new challenge with the highly rewarding feeling of having led a top-class IR team, which has been honored with a number of IR Magazine Awards over the years,’ says Avila. ‘I look forward to closely following the team’s future success under Cristina’s leadership.’
Candice de Monts-Petit
Candice de Monts-Petit joined IR Magazine as a senior editor in 2012. Prior to this, she worked in investor relations, first as an IRO for oil and gas firms in Paris and Moscow and subsequently as an IR consultant in London. She graduated in business...
