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The Canadian multinational Scotiabank announced last Friday that it completed the acquisition of 51% of the shares of the Chilean Banco Cencosud’s in Peru after receiving the approval from Peruvian authorities.
Already in May 2018 Scotiabank, Canada’s international bank and a leading financial services provider in the Americas, announced to purchase a majority shareholding in the Chilean group’s bank which required an investment of approx. 130 million Canadian dollars (US $ 101.2 million).
Cencosud is a multinational retail company with headquarters in Santiago, Chile. It's the largest retail company in Chile and the third largest listed retail company in Latin America. In Peru Cencosud operates since 2007. It owns the second largest supermarket chain Wong – Metro, the department stores Ripley and Paris as well as a number of shopping malls and until recently Banco Cencosud, which is one of the larger players in the credit card and consumer loan market in the country.
Now the deal is completed. In a statement to the press the Scotiabank group said that both financial institutions will jointly manage credit card operations and offer other products and services to customers in partnership for 15 years; an agreement like those between Scotiabank and Cencosud in Chile and Colombia. With the closing of this acquisition, Scotiabank has become the second largest credit card issuer in Peru.
“Partnering with Cencosud has been a rewarding process in which we have begun to leverage the potential of the consumer finance business”, said Miguel Uccelli, CEO & Country Head of Scotiabank Peru. He further concluded, ”With this acquisition we have completed one more phase in our strategy to strengthen our consumer financing and credit card business in Peru, which aligns with our global vision to increase scale in the countries of the Pacific Alliance: Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru”.
Carlos Morante, CEO of Banco Cencosud, and in charge of the operation under the new name of Caja CAT Perú said, “Our objective is to leverage the teams from Banco Cencosud and Scotiabank to build an improved experience for all our customers. Our customers will continue to enjoy the products they have with us, under the same conditions, but with greater support. We will continue operating separately, taking into account the special features of each business and we will continue to work with our current team of employees.” Morante indicated that no customer has to change their credit cards or other products, “Everything remains the same”, he concluded.
