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Biography of Jaime J. Montealegre, W’73

Mr. Montealegre was born in Nicaragua and has been living in Costa Rica since 1992. He formed the Sigma Group in 1992, and he is the managing partner of several offshore funds specializing in emerging markets investments. He is very passionate about the investment world, is an avid reader, and uses a very strict conceptual and intellectual framework for his investment decisions. Mr. Montealegre is also very active in real estate investments with important projects in: 1) Costa Rica, where he is one of the lead investors in Genesis Investment Fund. Genesis has developed over 1,500,000 square feet of Commercial and Residential development with another 3.000,000 square feet of commercial and ocean front resort - residential developments both in construction and in the planning stage, and 2) the Dominican Republic, where he is the lead investor in Renaissance Development Corporation, developer of the Acropolis Plaza and Citicorp Building.

Mr. Montealegre lived from 1981 to 1991 in NYC. While in NYC he worked five years for Citicorp. He was a Vice President in the Specialized Finance Division of the Investment Bank, in charge of structuring large deals for corporate clients, taking advantage of deep secondary market discounts. Prior to that he was a Deputy Head of the Loan Syndication Department, and was deeply involved in restructuring negotiations of the debt of the biggest Latin American countries. In 1987 Mr. Montealegre decided to leave Citibank and worked closely with several banks, as an independent trader and a principal, helping large Latin American companies manage their offshore liabilities, and helping investors participate in the secondary debt market for Latin American obligations.

From 1975 to 1981 Mr. Montealegre lived and worked in Nicaragua. He was Deputy Director of Finance Department of the Central Bank of Nicaragua, and then Director of the Venture Capital Unit of Banco de America. Subsequently he was General Manager of Caribe Motors de Nicaragua, and Co-General Manager of Electroquímica Pennwalt.  After the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, in order to protect private businesses from confiscation, he became Executive Director of COSEP, an umbrella organization representative of Nicaraguan Private Enterprise. He was heavily involved in difficult negotiations with the leftist revolutionary government.

Mr. Montealegre has a B.S. in Economics Cum Laude from the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania; an M.B.A. with Honors from the Graduate School of Business of The University of Chicago, and is a Ph. D. candidate in Business Economics from the Graduate School of Business of The University of Chicago.

He has been married since 1983 to Margarita Herdocia de Montealegre, and they are the parents of three boys. Mr. Montealegre is on the board of several companies located throughout Central America, and several philanthropic and educational organizations.