Spain’s biggest bank and Europe’s second-biggest by market capitalization announced on Thursday that its first quarter net profit rose 5.7%, thanks mainly to the work of the Banco Santander S/A branches in Brazil. A driver behind the upbeat results was higher-than-expected net interest income, which rose to 7.1 billion euros against 6.04 billion euros in the year-ago period, against [...]
Posts under ‘Banks’
Brazil clips the wings of banks adept at capital flight
By Gillian Tett/Financial Times The Brazilian financial system has contained a striking local quirk in recent years. Unlike most other large economies, Brazil has insisted that any global bank that wanted to operate within its borders had to create subsidiaries, with their own capital, rather than branches of a head office. This stance seemed unfashionable [...]
Itaú Unibanco to Merge Units With Porto Seguro Insurance
Itaú Unibanco, one of Latin America’s biggest financial conglomerates, is merging its insurance unit with Porto Seguro in a deal valued at 1.7 billion reais (or US$ 930 million), as – according to an article posted today in The New York Times’ blog - the country’s financial sector continues to consolidate. Itau Unibanco, itself the product of [...]
New massive banking merger in Brazil, this time on state-controlled banks
As mentioned in this blog on November, 10th, Brazil’s banking system is bracing itself for a wave of consolidation. The last announcement came yesterday as Banco do Brasil, the country’s top state-controlled bank announced it will spend US$2.3 billion to buy a 71.3 percent share in Banco Nossa Caixa SA, owned by the Sao Paulo [...]