Daniel González and a career marked by transforming companies from within
His path through finance, the general management of YPF and the leadership of IDEA outlines the management vocation of an executive who made corporate reconversion his hallmark.
When he took over as general manager of YPF in April 2018, Daniel González summed up what drove him in one phrase: he was excited about transforming the oil company into “an integrated energy company.” That idea — reconverting structures, professionalizing teams and opening companies to the market — runs through a career of more than thirty years that took him from financial placements to the leadership of Argentina’s main business forum.
Learning in corporate finance
His interest in the mechanics of companies appeared early. In the 1990s, González worked at Transportadora Gas del Sur in financial operations, a task that projected him toward Merrill Lynch through Guillermo Reca. The following fifteen years, marked by the bank’s absorption by Bank of America, specialized him in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions, a discipline that consists precisely of redesigning the perimeter and structure of companies.
That experience explains Egon Zehnder’s call to bring him into YPF in 2012. The recently renationalized company needed a chief financial officer with standing of his own who could offer reassurance to a market full of questions.
Rebuilding access to credit
As CFO for six years, González made financing his field. He succeeded in bringing YPF back to international markets and raising around $3.5 billion despite the technical default of the Argentine state, its controlling shareholder. At the start of the Macri administration, he added another $1 billion and played a decisive role in the oil company’s partnerships and acquisitions. The ability to secure capital in adverse scenarios became his distinguishing mark.
His rise to general management was a continuation rather than a break: he had already led investor relations, overseen affiliated companies and joined the Executive Committee. Miguel Gutiérrez, then chairman of the board, linked the appointment to the strategic plan presented in October 2017, which projected investments of nearly $30 billion over five years and sought to transform the company’s operations and culture.
From the company to sector debate
The vocation to influence structures found a new setting in 2021, when González became executive director of the Instituto para el Desarrollo Empresarial de la Argentina (IDEA). From there, he moved from managing a company to articulating the positions of a large part of the business community, in an organization known for its annual colloquiums.
That transition led in 2024 to his return to the public sector as coordinator of Energy and Mining at the Ministry of Economy. The argument behind his appointment was his first-hand knowledge of the industry’s network, accumulated while leading the country’s most important oil company.
Today, his agenda combines the three areas he has covered throughout his career: finance, energy operations and institutional representation. González chairs the committee of the Incentive Regime for Large Investments and projects an accelerated expansion of the sector over the coming months, a continuation of that idea of reconversion he expressed when he reached the top of YPF.