Brysam Global Partners, a private equity fund that mainly handles cash
for U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase & Co, invested 230 billion
Colombian pesos (US$98 million) for an 18.84% stake in the Colombian
privately-held bank BCSC.
“Our business model is to invest in the consumers’ financial sector in
emerging markets and there is a good dynamics of Colombia’s financial
sector,” Marge Magner, a managing partner and co-founder of Brysam,
told Dow Jones Newswires.
“The bank has a good track record and we expect more growth,” she added.
BCSC is Colombia’s eighth largest bank in terms of assets and is
supplying mainly lower middle-class customers with financial services.
The bank is primarily owned by a local charity, Fundacion Social. The
International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s financial arms, holds a
9.5% of the bank.
BCSC will use the proceeds to boost its operations by expanding its
network of branches and ATMs and will also use part of the cash
injection to make loans to customers, Eulalia Arboleda, the bank’s
Chief Executive said.
The bank mainly funds its lending business with customers’ deposits and
not through credit lines from foreign banks or from the capital
markets, Arboleda said.
She added the bank is likely to report a COP90 billion net profit for this year.
According to data from the country’s banking regulator, the bank had booked a net profit of COP82 billion in 2007.
Magner said she expects the financial business to slow down in the next
year as everywhere else, “but it will continue growing,” she said.