Javier Domenech of Scotiabank: Between music and numbers

“Sometimes the lack of opportunities open to you is frustrating, but with a clear goal and resilience, you will achieve anything you set your mind to.”

Javier Domenech

Pink Floyd’s “Money” is a quintessential progressive rock song, so it may be no coincidence that the British band is Javier Domenech’s favorite. Domenech is Treasury Director at Scotiabank Mexico and his passions are music and finance.

“Music has a lot to do with math. There’s a point where they intersect, but to me, it’s more of an opportunity to relax, enjoy and think,” explains Domenech, who also plays guitar in a band named Overdrive.

An admirer of Roger Waters and David Gilmour — former Pink Floyd members — he says that when you work in a stressful environment like finance, you need rest to keep your mind clear.

“In finance, when there’s a lot of pressure, you stop functioning well, then you make bad decisions and you stress out even more. It’s a vicious cycle. But when you’re relaxed, you’re more productive and make better decisions because you’re thinking much more clearly,” he says.

Speaking through videoconference surrounded by acoustic and electric guitars, Domenech recalls picking up the guitar at age 17 and has always taken classes to master his technique.

On that note, Domenech observes that to devote yourself to finance, you have to keep studying and seeking opportunities: “Sometimes the lack of opportunities open to you is frustrating, but with a clear goal and resilience, you will achieve anything you set your mind to.”

“I really like the saying, ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’”

Never stop learning

For example, when he was finishing his degree in Industrial Engineering. Domenech got into a program run by a bank called Banamex at the time, where he received a scholarship to study for an MBA in the U.S. “I was drawn to it because I wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise,” he states.

In that graduate program at the University of Michigan, he became interested in all things related to the markets. However, it wasn’t the best time to look for work in the field.

“I returned to Mexico at the wrong time, because I finished my master’s degree in 1995, precisely when the ‘tequila crisis’ (also known in his country as ‘the December mistake’) broke out,” he remembers.

“Before finishing my degree, I came to Mexico for a few days. Right as I was about to board the plane, I grabbed the Wall Street Journal and read that the [Mexican] peso had depreciated so much that when I went back to Michigan to finish my degree, everything seemed very expensive to me. At the time, I now had to multiply by seven instead of multiplying by three,” he recalls.

Upon returning to his country, he worked in portfolio recovery, one of the fastest-growing fields back then due to the state of the economy in the aftermath of the crisis.

Although it seems that much of what he did and learned at that time had nothing to do with what he does today, the fact is that it all helped him in his daily life when he began holding higher positions.

“For example, when I was in corporate banking, I had to analyze bank balance sheets, which are very important in order to understand the bank’s accounts and bottom line,” he explains. “Now I am surprised to find that the same things I thought were a waste of time eventually became very important.”

Domenech has taken advantage of opportunities not only in his professional life, but also in terms of his passion for music: “A few years ago, I logged into the Bloomberg Terminal® and saw that David Gilmour had announced a new show at Radio City Music Hall. The day I read the news was my birthday and the concert was coming up in a few months, right on my wedding anniversary. I said to myself, ‘this was too much of a coincidence!’ so I bought tickets and we went to the concert,” he says.

Learning from great people

As much as he admires and follows his favorite musicians or tries to improve his guitar technique, Domenech makes sure to have some “gurus” in the financial world.

“I especially admire people who have moved from academia into business, such as Hal Varian (an American economist who specializes in microeconomics and information economy), who is not exactly in my field, but he taught me at the University of Michigan and is now Chief Economist at Google. He is someone who has created great value by applying brainpower to the industry,” he says.

As far as books go, he recommends reading Gregory Zuckerman’s The Man Who Solved the Market, which recounts the birth and evolution of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative investment firm founded by mathematician Jim Simons whose fund, Medallion, was extremely successful for more than 30 years.

“It’s interesting how there is always a lot we don’t see, but there are always breakthroughs going on behind the scenes,” he says.

Constant evolution

Although his musical tastes lean toward the classics, Domenech keeps up to date and leverages changes in his professional life.

“For example, there is an interesting dynamic with diversity and inclusion. It benefits your work, generates more ideas and creates better and fairer opportunities; this helps clients because we are able to create customized products,” he says.

He also believes that today’s labor market is much more professional compared with a few years ago. “On the one hand, we demand more skills, greater preparation and more ethical behavior from people in the industry; on the other, schools have improved a lot. There are even some that provide financial information tools, such as the Bloomberg [Terminal], so students already know how to use it,” he points out.

“It’s about evolution and professionalization, but it’s also very important to build more bridges between the industry and academia,” he says.

“Something very satisfying for me was getting involved with the CFA Society Mexico. I took the exams and got the Charter by transitioning from credit to markets. Later, I was fortunate to see the company grow and the CFA went from being unknown in Mexico to being highly valued by employers and regulators. For example, annually we do the Research Challenge that has been effective in uniting universities and employers, and this has generated a virtuous circle, with more students considering the CFA to complement their studies and the industry demanding better prepared professionals.”

His recommendation to new generations: do not lose sight of the fact that banking is a service to society. “New opportunities in coming years will require more preparation and specialization than what my generation required,” he says.

Domenech, who for 25 years has interspersed numbers with musical notes, knows very well how finance has evolved, as well as the challenges yet to come — even though, when it comes to rock music, he prefers the classics.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg invited the GETTERS of the financial market in Latin America to share their insightful stories about their careers, their success stories and the challenges they had to face while not only witnessing the development of this fast-paced environment, but actively contributing to its evolution by creating new tools, sharing best practices and inspiring change.