 |
"I think that the local banks are doing a very good job and they have very good capabilities" |
A senior Citi official in Latin America says that Brazil’s leading local banks will remain independent despite rumours that foreign banks, including Citi itself, could be sizing up a potential acquisition. One banker in São Paulo told Euromoney recently that he reckoned that Brazil’s three big local banks – Bradesco, Itaú and Unibanco – could become targets for global banks, such as Citi, as they bid to increase their presence in Latin America’s most important market.
But Raul Anaya, head of the global consumer group for Latin America at Citi, dismisses the idea, saying that an acquisition of any of the three would be too difficult to swallow for a foreign rival.
"I think that the local banks are doing a very good job and they have very good capabilities," he says. "I think that achieving the large mergers will continue to be tough for the banking industry and so doing something with a combination of organic and inorganic is probably the way banks in the country will go."