Santiago joined the Astris team in February 2016 as Managing Director. During his more than 20 years of experience he has developed a unique blend of experience encompassing both the corporate as well as banking perspectives, with a very strong expertise in project finance, debt/capital markets, M&A, project development and private equity. His industry expertise spans the oil & gas (pipelines, LNG, E&P), infrastructure (ports, toll roads), power (generation and transmission) and mining sectors.
Mr. Pardo began his career at Citibank Colombia in 1991, moving to New York in 1997 where he worked for 11 years at Citi’s Infrastructure and Energy Finance Group. From 2002 to 2008 he was the Director leading the team originating and executing transactions in Latin America, reporting directly to the global head of Infrastructure and Energy Finance. During this time, he was directly responsible for closing over 20 transactions in 12 different countries in the Americas, raising over USD 8 billion in funding from multiple sources (banks, international and local capital markets, ECAs and official agencies).
He moved back to Colombia in 2008, where he transitioned into the corporate side, serving as Project Finance Director for Reficar and Managing Director for Infrastructure and Energy of Abacus Capital, a local asset manager. Most recently (2014-2016), he served as CFO of La Luna Resources, an E&P company developing conventional and unconventional resources in Colombia. Prior to this (2011-2014), he was CFO of TGI, the largest natural gas pipeline company in Colombia. For these last two roles, he was selected as CFO by major private equity investors backing these companies and was responsible for corporate finance, investor relations, accounting, treasury, financial planning, M&A and new business development. He personally led the refinancing of TGI’s USD 1,125 million debt in the international capital markets, and assisted CVCI in their successful exit of this investment for USD 880 million.
Mr. Pardo holds an MBA (with distinction) from the Johnson School at Cornell University, as well as B.S. in economics from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.
He is fluent in both English and Spanish and conversational in Portuguese.