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April 7, 2008 |
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BANCOLOMBIA: Eyes More Acquisitions in Central America Bancolombia's Chairperson Jorge Londono told Business News Americas that the bank is willing to look for more acquisitions to strengthen its Central American presence. BNamericas relates that Bancolombia made its first purchase outside Colombia last year. It bought El Salvador's largest bank Banagricola for US$900 million. According to BNamericas, Mr. Londono said on the sidelines of a conference in Santiago, "We want to look at other opportunities to move on with our international expansion process, firstly at Central America. It's an attractive market and in some ways it would be natural for us to expand there." Mr. Londono told BNamericas that Bancolombia is working on integrating Banagricola's products and services with its platform and administrative model, which will take long. Mr. Londono commented to BNamericas, "The merger process was carried out with no surprises ... we were lucky the institution was not sold because it was going through a crisis or it needed restructuring." Bancolombia is also interested in Peru, where it already operates through its vehicle renting unit and will launch its trust fund unit Fiduciaria Bancolombia later this year, BNamericas states, citing Mr. Londono. Bancolombia is Colombia's largest full-service financial institution, formed by a merger of three leading Colombian financial institutions. Bancolombia's market capitalization is over US$5.5 billion, with US$13.8 billion asset base and US$1.4 billion in shareholders' equity as of Sept. 30, 2006. Bancolombia is the only Colombian company with an ADR level III program in the New York Stock Exchange. * * * As reported in the Troubled Company Reporter-Latin America on June 27, 2007, Moody's Investors Service changed the outlook to positive from stable on its Ba3 long-term foreign currency deposit ratings and Ba1 long-term foreign currency subordinated bond rating for Bancolombia, S.A. |
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