Jorge R Vila is the founder and Managing Director of Dolavon GB Ltd.

Mr Vila is a Spanish citizen with 43 years of experience in global emerging markets, at leading private and public sector commercial, investment and development financial institutions in Washington DC, New York, Madrid, Buenos Aires and London since 1979.

With a banking business and legal background, he has extensive experience identifying, structuring and implementing financing and co-financing possibilities for private sector banks, companies and projects in emerging markets.

From 1985 to 1997, working at Shearson Lehman in New York, Banco Santander in Madrid and his company in Buenos Aires, he traded sovereign debt of a large number of countries in default, from Russia to Chile. He was an active participant in the process of converting Chilean debt into equity and local capital market obligations under a formal government program. His deep knowledge of Chile led him to trade copper futures, capturing the opportunities created by the international copper market disruption in 1996. During those years, he also financed the working capital of small and medium size companies in his native Argentina by discounting their short-term receivables from top tier companies.

From 1998, based in London at Bank of America, he originated short-term trade related obligations from top tier companies in Latin America, syndicating those obligations with a large number of European banks.

As an independent consultant since 2001, he originated credit facilities for a number of private sector banks and companies in emerging markets, including a trade related credit facility for a Russian bank and a credit facility for a Chilean salmon company, both syndicated with European banks.

In 2005, as part of a European Union project, he wrote a review of Palestinian monetary, banking and financial legislation, very well received by an audience of stakeholders at the end of the project. From 2006 to 2009, he led a US-funded privatisation project in Afghanistan that closed a number of state-owned enterprises, auctioning a significant amount in fixed assets that funded the payment of overdue pensions for the employees of the closed companies, among other liabilities.

From 2009 to August 2024, as General Manager of the Iraq Middle Market Development Foundation (IMMDF), a DFC-funded company (www.dfc.org), he led a team in Iraq and Jordan that financed 52 private sector projects of small and medium size companies in Iraq, with outstanding results identifying creditworthy projects, originating and monitoring loans, restructuring loans to reflect the payment capacity of borrowers, and paying IMMDF’s credit facilities owed to DFC.

During 2016 and 2021-22, Mr Vila designed and taught two innovative and very successful development finance seminars for business students at American University of Iraq, Sulimaniyah, focused on a practical approach, costs, risks and renewable energies.

He founded Dolavon in the United Kingdom, where he lives with his family, to continue his work in emerging markets.