The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
Bank of Nova Scotia would consider acquisitions to further expand operations in Latin America, Chief Executive Officer Brian Porter said.
Just don’t expect anything in Brazil or Argentina.
“We’ve got a small business in Brazil and we’re fine with that, thank you,” Porter said on Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg TV Canada.
“And Argentina, we have no desire to go back.”
Scotiabank’s operations in Brazil are focused on corporate lending and investment banking, with no retail lending presence. The Toronto-based bank withdrew from Argentina in 2002, after the South American country defaulted on its debt and devalued its currency.
Citigroup Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. lender, said last month it plans to sell retail-banking and credit-card operations in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.
The bank said it will continue serving institutional clients in the
countries.
Porter said he’d consider “tuck-in acquisitions” to expand Scotiabank at home and abroad, citing its 20 percent purchase of Canadian Tire Corp.’s financial-services business in 2014, and more recent takeovers of Citigroup’s consumer-banking operations in Panama, Costa Rica and Peru.
Porter said earlier Tuesday in a call with analysts that he’d view such deals as “incremental acquisitions.”