Dan Pascariu is one of the most experienced figures in Romanian banking, with a career spanning nearly five decades. He served as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of UniCredit Țiriac Bank, later UniCredit Bank Romania, from 2007 until his retirement in 2020, having previously led the bank and its predecessor institutions as chief executive. Over the past three decades he has served on 27 boards in Romania and abroad — fifteen in the financial sector and twelve in industries ranging from energy and aviation to real estate and agribusiness — chairing twelve companies, among them TAROM and NEPI Rockcastle.

He began his career in 1973 at the Romanian Bank for Foreign Trade (BRCE), where he worked in the international department and, in the early 1980s, took part in negotiating the rescheduling of Romania's external debt with London Club and Paris Club creditors. After 1989 he was appointed Vice-President and then, in 1990, President and CEO of BRCE, overseeing the bank's restructuring into a universal commercial bank. In 1991 he co-founded the Romanian Banking Association, serving as its first President until 1994, and became one of the principal promoters of banking reform in post-communist Romania.

In 1994 he became Executive President of Banca București, a bank established by Alpha Credit Bank of Greece and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Chairman of the Bucharest Investment Group. From 1996 he chaired CA-IB Financial Advisers, Creditanstalt's investment banking arm in Romania, before taking the helm of Bank Austria Creditanstalt România in the late 1990s. He led the bank through the consolidations that reshaped it over the following decade — its rebranding as HVB Bank România after Bank Austria's combination with HypoVereinsbank, the 2006 merger with Banca Țiriac and the 2007 merger with UniCredit's Romanian subsidiary — after which he relinquished executive duties to chair the combined bank's Supervisory Board.

Dan Pascariu graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Trade at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in 1973. He is a co-founder and associate professor of the Romanian Banking Institute and has lectured as a guest professor at his alma mater as well as at the University of Chicago, Stanford University and Georgetown University, and he remains engaged as a speaker and mentor on banking, governance and leadership.