A company's reputation and that of the person at the top are increasingly intertwined. When a fund considers taking a stake, when a bank reviews a deal or when a journalist prepares a story, one of the first things they do is search for the CEO's name. What they find shapes their questions, their timelines and, sometimes, their decisions. If you run or have run a company in Spain, part of what they find will be in Spanish.
What investors look at
In an investment or financing deal, reviewing the management team is part of the due diligence. Beyond the accounts, they look for risk signals in the person:
- Litigation and court rulings, especially criminal, insolvency or employment cases.
- Administrative penalties published in official gazettes or on regulators' websites.
- Company directorships, current and past, in the BORME (the Official Gazette of the Spanish Commercial Registry) and in commercial registers. A company dissolved with debts or an old insolvency raises questions.
- Adverse media: news about disputes, investigations or controversies.
- Consistency: whether the public track record matches the one in the business plan.
- Personal exposure: social media comments, old controversies or relationships that could create a conflict of interest.
Many of these searches are done with professional tools that scan press and registers in several languages, not just with Google.
What journalists look at
A journalist is looking for something else: context and an angle. They go through press archives, social media, professional profiles, past interviews and public statements. They are interested in what does not fit: a contradiction between what you said years ago and what you say now, a dispute with former partners, a review by an ex-employee or a BORME entry nobody has explained.
Whatever you do not explain yourself, someone else will.
And what artificial intelligence says
More and more analysts and journalists start by asking an AI assistant. These systems summarise what they find, sometimes with errors: they mix up people with the same name, treat positions you no longer hold as current or attribute controversies without context. Checking what they say about you and your company is now part of the preparation.
Before a deal
If a funding round, a sale or an appointment is on the horizon, review your online reputation months in advance. Removing content or correcting information can take weeks, and in the middle of a deal any move attracts attention.
The signals that cause most concern
- Negative results on the first page with no response or context.
- Old information presented as current: a case that was dropped still described as an "investigation".
- Fake profiles or accounts impersonating the executive.
- No professional presence at all, which forces others to fill the gap.
- Contradictions between the official biography, LinkedIn and the press.
How to prepare with judgement
1. Run the search others will run
Search for your name on Google and Bing, in News and Images, together with the names of your current and former companies, and in both English and Spanish if you operate in Spain. Ask several AI assistants as well.
2. Separate what can be removed from what needs explaining
- What can be removed: outdated information about cases that were dropped, personal data published without a legal basis, court rulings that were not anonymised, false content or impersonation. The tools here are the right to be forgotten (Article 93 of Spain's data protection act and judgment C-131/12 of the Court of Justice of the EU), the right to erasure and, where facts are false, the right of reply or action for infringement of the right to honour.
- What needs explaining: accurate news of public interest, company directorships or ongoing litigation. These are not removed, but they can be given context.
A CEO has a public profile, and that weighs in the balance against the right to information. That is why requests must be particularly well argued.
3. Build a solid presence of your own
An up-to-date biography on the corporate website, a consistent LinkedIn profile, interviews and articles under your name. What you publish takes up space and gives your version before anyone asks for it.
4. Monitor continuously
Alerts on your name and your company's name let you react before a story spreads.
What not to do
- Ask for accurate, relevant news to be removed just because it is uncomfortable. It usually fails and can turn into a new story.
- Flood the internet with artificial content to bury results. Search engines notice, and so do journalists.
- Leave it to someone who does not know the legal framework. With public profiles, a wrong step echoes further.
If you want to review your situation before a deal, you can read our guide on executives' online reputation before a deal or appointment (in Spanish). We work on executives' image in our personal and executive reputation service and on what AI assistants say about you in AI reputation.
