ORIGEN
History
Fomento de Fundaciones (International Foundation) is a private foundation with an international scope and educational and cultural purposes, established in Madrid on July 22, 1987.
Rafael Termes was its founder, and Luis Valls its promoter.
Rafael Termes Carreró, CEO of Banco Popular from 1966 to 1977 and first president of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB) from 1977 to 1990, was its founder and provided the necessary assets for its establishment. From the beginning, it had a clear mission: to perpetuate his commitment to socio-cultural and educational development, as he had done throughout his life. Carlos Figuero, CEO of social action, recalls: “In 1987 Rafael Termes proposed to Valls to increase international work and created, with his assets, Fomento de Fundaciones, International Foundation, dedicated to social work. Today, it is one entity that continues to unite our efforts.”
Luis Valls Taberner, who led Banco Popular for fifty years also promoted Fomento de Fundaciones, to which he bequeathed his estate and encouraged others to name the Foundation as heir in their wills. Additionally, he contributed from behind the scenes to drive its management, the development of programs, the criteria that should govern the foundation, and the selection of beneficiaries, among other things.
Who was Rafael Termes?
Rafael Termes was an engineer and economist by training, a financier by profession, and a humanist in spirit. He was born in Sitges (Barcelona) on December 5, 1918, and died in Madrid on August 25, 2005. He served as CEO of Banco Popular for eleven years (from 1966 to 1977), the first president of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB) between 1977 and 1990, and also director of the IESE campus in Madrid from 1997, when he was named honorary president in 2000.
He started as a finance professor at IESE and later became the CEO of Banco Popular Español. Termes was capable of teaching and putting into practice financial theory, management science, and people management in practice.
He held a doctorate in industrial engineering (1945), was a full academician of the Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences of Barcelona (1983) and the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (1991), Doctor honoris causa by the Francisco Marroquín University of Guatemala, and a founding member of the NGO SECOT (Spanish Seniors for Technical Cooperation).
Additionally, he authored several books, including: “El poder creador del riesgo” (FisicalBook, 1986), “Las causas del paro” (Inst. de Estudios Económicos, 1995), “Desde la libertad” (Eilea, 1997), “Inversión y Coste de Capital, Manual de Finanzas” (McGraw-Hill, 1997), “Del estatismo a la libertad. Perspectiva de los países del Este” (Rialp, D.L., 1990), the prologue to “Capitalismo y cultura cristiana” (Instituto de Empresa y Humanismo, 1999), and “Antropología del capitalismo” (Rialp, 2001). For the last mentioned, he received the Free Enterprise Award (2002) from the Rafael del Pino Foundation.
Thanks to the social action he carried out throughout his life, he received various awards and decorations: the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit and the Commandery with Plaque of the Order of Alfonso X the Wise. He was a Knight of the Legion of Honor and received the Gold Mercury Award in Economics in 2003.
He also received the Castilla y León Infanta Cristina Economy Award in 2003.
“It is a cliché to say that with the death of a person, an era comes to an end. With the death of Rafael Termes, this is not the case: he always worked in the present while, looking to the future, and he did so to convince those who read or listened to him that his ideas could contribute to a better society.”1
Bibliography
(1) Excerpt from the obituary titled “A Liberal Humanist,” written by Antonio Argandoña in La Gaceta de los Negocios and published on August 26, 2005.