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Spain's BSCH Buys Brazil's No. 3 State-owned Banespa Bank
Spain's largest banking group Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH) on Monday purchased 33 percent of the total capital of Brazil's state-owned Banespa with more than US$3.6 billion in a bid to control the bank.
The acquisition catapults the BSCH into the No. 3 private banking slot, with capital totaling more than 20 billion dollars, from No. 5 in Brazil, the biggest market in Latin America. It also enables the BSCH to gain a 60 percent stake in the bank's voting stock.
In an auction supervised by the Rio de Janeiro stock exchange, the BSCH beat Bradesco and Unibanco, Brazil's No. 1 and No. 3 private banks.
Banespa, founded in 1909 and put under state control in 1994, is Brazil's third largest state bank, with a capital of more than 15.2 billion dollars. It has nearly three million clients, 577 branches and 743 automatic telling machines across the country, mostly in the richest and populous Sau Paulo state.
Banespa has seen shrinking profits in recent years due to poor management, with its net profits dropping 9.8 percent to 365 million dollars in the first nine months of this year from the year-ago level.
The Brazilian government expressed satisfaction with the auction result. Brazilian President Fernando Enrique Cardoso said Monday's auction indicated the international financial community's confidence in Brazil and its financial system. Other government officials believe that Banespa's sale will help stimulate the economy in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most industrialized state.
The BSCH operates a total of 17 branches in 22 Latin American countries with some 22 million clients in the region.
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