Capital One announced the appointments of three experienced leaders to its national food and beverage specialty banking team after another strong year of growth.

Jorge Calderón has been selected to lead the food and beverage team for the Southwest Region and will be based in Dallas, TX. Additionally, Chris Innes has been appointed to oversee the group's restaurant lending activity based in New York. Industry veteran Paul Westra, also based in New York, will join Innes to provide strategic partnership and industry-specific solutions that meet current and prospective customer needs.

Calderón joined Capital One in 2006 after 13 years at JPMorgan Chase. Calderón has spent the last five years as the regional leader of Capital One's Commercial Bank in Central Texas, including Austin and San Antonio. Under his leadership, the company has built and grown a large restaurant franchise business in that region.

Innes joined Capital One in November of 2017. Previously, he covered restaurants and food at Cowen and Company, Stifel Financial, GE Capital and Wells Fargo. His experience in the restaurant industry includes equity research, credit research and relationship management.

Prior to joining Capital One, Westra spent more than 20 years as one of Wall Street's leading equity research analysts within the restaurant industry while working at Stifel Financial, Cowen and Company, Credit Suisse, First Boston and Salomon Brothers.

"The restaurant industry faces a unique set of challenges; therefore, lending into the industry requires deep understanding of winning operating models and a thoughtful approach to structuring transactions," said Paul Baisley, Head of Capital One's national food and beverage specialty banking team. "As a team, we know that the perspectives brought by Chris, Jorge and Paul will elevate what it means to be a banking partner to restaurant companies in specific regions, as well as across the country."

Capital One's food and beverage specialty banking team serves both private, public and private-equity owned clients across the entire food value chain, and provides a broad range of corporate banking products and services such as corporate lending, treasury management, commercial card and more.