Colombia's largest brokerage Interbolsa SA agreed to buy 100% of the Brazilian brokerage Finabank for 36 million reals (US$21 million), the company said in a filing to the Colombian market regulator.
In 2007, Interbolsa had signed an agreement to buy a stake in Finabank and eventually got the authorization from the Brazilian authorities to acquire up to 100% of the Brazilian brokerage, Interbolsa's Chief Executive Rodrigo Jaramillo said in a telephone interview.
"Now, we will now focus on consolidating the two companies," Jaramillo said. "In the future, we expect the Brazilian operations to become bigger than our Colombian operations," he added.
Jaramillo said Interbolsa doesn't plan to expand in other countries in Latin America in the immediate future, though he didn't rule out more acquisitions later on.
Shares of Interbolsa Thursday rose 0.2% to 2,305 Colombian pesos (US$1.16), while the benchmark IGBC index rose 1.7%.
