With the incorporation of this company, LATIBEX will provide investment opportunities in a new country, Panama, thus increasing the number of nations present on the market. This will offer the European investor the chance to invest in a financial conglomerate with regional presence, as besides Panama, Banistmo operates in Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and the Bahamas.
LATIBEX provides an ideal vehicle to channel European investments to Latin America, as it allows investors to buy and sell Latin American blue-chips through a single market, with a single trading and settlement system and based on transparency and security standards.
Grupo Banistmo is the region’s leading provider of financial services, offering a wide product and service range; banking, investment banking, insurance, payment channels and pensions. In March 2006 the company’s assets exceeded $8.9 bn and its shareholder’s capital amounted to $ 700 million. The Group has over 5,400 partners, 3,000 shareholders and 230 offices in Central America and Colombia. In addition to this, Banistmo is the leading provider of investment banking in the operations carried out in the region’s capital markets.
Alberto Vallarino Clément, a Grupo Banistmo Executive, said: “we are proud to list our shares on LATIBEX. With this operation we will enhance our presence on the global capital markets, thus turning our growth and regional consolidation strategy into a commitment to increasing the value of our shareholders’ investments in a sustainable, transparent and reliable way”
Vallarino added that the listing on LATIBEX will imply “having more markets to trade the stock as well as relying on a much wider investor base, which will in turn mean more access to capital and more liquidity for the value of the stock”.
