Julio Fermo is Founding Partner and Director at Columbus Zuma Investment Banking, a boutique investment bank headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, specializing in M&A and financing transactions, and a member of Oaklins, an international partnership with a presence in more than fifty countries across five continents, and recognized as one of the world’s leading partnerships of independent M&A firms. Julio is a Certified Public Accountant from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR). He holds a Master´s degree in Finance from the Centro de Estudios Macroeconómicos de Argentina (CEMA), which he complemented with a Master´s in Bankruptcy from the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires (UBA).

He has more than twenty years of experience in the Investment Banking industry, covering a broad range of products and services such as M&A, fixed income, structured products, multilateral financing, advisory, syndicated loans, project finance, private equity, venture capital, liability management, in-court and out-of-court work-outs, LBOs, in- court expert advisory, and fairness opinions. His on the ground international experience has enabled him to maintain ongoing relationships with financial and strategic investors, multilateral agencies, ECAs, commercial and investment banks, corporations, accounting and law firms, rating agencies, regulators and entrepreneurs.

Prior to joining Columbus, Mr. Fermo served as Vice President of Citigroup/Citibank, N.A. and Head of Structured Finance within Citibank Argentina’s Investment Banking Team. Before that, he was part of the Corporate Finance team responsible for restructuring Citigroup´s US$ 2 billion proprietary loan portfolio, following Argentina´s 2001 financial crisis. In 1999, he worked as an Associate in the Investment Banking Group at Citigroup Latin America, based in New York, covering a wide range of products and jurisdictions. Earlier in his career, he led cross-border project finance transactions, as well as capital markets primary issues and syndicated loans across the region. Also, before joining Citibank, he worked for two years at Galicia Capital Markets S.A. as an investment banking officer.

Currently, he serves as Academic Director of the Master in Finance (MFIN) at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT). He has been a professor in this program for over fifteen years, teaching Financial Accounting and Corporate Finance, and has been elected Best Professor nine times in the past twelve years. He also teaches Corporate Finance in UTDT´s MBA program and Executive Education programs in both open and in-company formats. Since 2012, he has coached the UTDT team competing in the CFA Equity Research Challenge, winning the local round four times. Previously, he taught Investment Banking and Mergers & Acquisitions in the Master in Finance at UNR (2002-2011) and Applied Investment Banking at the Universidad de San Andrés until 2006. He has also led several in-house training programs at Citibank.