Creating and distributing additional copies is prohibited without the permission of the publisher. Contact subscriptions@latinfinance.com.

Clash of the Giants

Nov 7, 2003

Spain's Santander Central Hispano began merging its two Chilean banks in August 2002 to form the country's largest bank in terms of assets, deposits, loans and equity. The new bank, Banco Santander Chile, also makes a lot more money than its competitors, spitting out $88.9 million in pre-tax income in the second quarter of this year, over 50% more than its nearest competitor, locally owned Banco de Chile.

Pre-tax income rose by almost half to $256.7 million for the whole of last year, the third consecutive year of growth. This is quite an achievement, given Chile's sluggish growth and the $75 million in restructuring charges the merged bank took in the fourth quarter. These charges virtually eliminated the bank's fourth quarter results in 2002. Banco Santander Chile takes this year's LatinFinance award for best bank in Chile on the strength of this enviable performance.

Double Up
In April...

To continue reading please take a free trial, subscribe or login below.


Already have an account?

Subscribe

Subscribe now for unlimited access to all current and archive news, data and market analysis. 

Subscribe

Free trial

Take a free two-week trial now for the latest news, data and market analysis.

Free Trial

LatinFinance Events

Poll

Is recent bond market volatility the end of easy borrowing for LatAm issuers?

Vote    



  1. Institutional wealth – pension funds: The next generation
  2. No Fear on Long-Term Investment: AmBev
  3. Debt investor scorecard: Beating the benchmark
  4. Brazilian investor scorecard: Sitting tight
  5. Man of the year: Seize the moment


Popular Searches


At a fundamental level, the issue is how to generate healthy returns in the medium to long term. Policy holders can see their fund go down over the course of a week or a month, but what we really should be looking at is returns over 20 or 30 years.

Daniel Schydlowsky, Peru’s banking, insurance and private pension fund regulator


Change font size: Switch to default font size Switch to medium font size Switch to large font size

All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. © 2013 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.

Printing isn't available for this page.