Oriental Financial Group may not be the largest player in Puerto Rico’s troubled banking sector, but by reducing exposure to consumer and mortgage loans, it emerges as the best of the worst.
Category: 2009
Posted inMagazine
Best Bank Mexico: Capitalizing on Crisis
Since the collapse of Lehman, Mexican authorities have come out repeatedly to defend their nation’s banking system as competitive, profitable and well capitalized.
Posted inMagazine
Best Bank Bolivia: Still on Top
Banks operating in the smaller LatAm economies have hunkered down during the crisis and the pecking order has remained largely the same as a result. In Bolivia, the dominant bank remains Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz (BMSC).
Posted inMagazine
Best Bank Colombia: Extending Reach
Despite Colombia’s generally sturdy fundamentals during the financial crisis, its financial institutions have had to swallow their share of bitter cocktails, including isolated corporate derivative losses, toxic Lehman notes, Stanford fallout, and slowing exports to the US. An uptick in unemployment and slower economic growth also boosted defaults at the retail and corporate levels for all banks.
Posted inMagazine
Best Bank Trinidad & Tobago: Bailout Assistant
Not every bank is able to say it benefitted from assisting the government bail out troubled financial entities, but Trinidad & Tobago’s First Citizens Bank can.
Posted inMagazine
Caribbean Infrastructure: Multilaterals to the Rescue
As financing from commercial banks becomes increasingly expensive and hard to access, developers of Caribbean infrastructure turn to multilaterals.
Posted inMagazine
The Top 40 Sustainable Banks
Our fifth annual survey of ethics and sustainability at LatAm’s leading banks shows standards getting tougher as investors demand more. Brazilians continue to stand out.
Posted inMagazine
LatAm Central Banker Ranking
For the first time, LatAm central banks had the footing to use counter-cyclical policy to fight crisis. Controlling inflation as growth returns is the challenge ahead.