An increasing number of domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions may make this year’s Top Central American banks listing the last to be a Top 100 as the number of standalone banks in the region falls. The establishment of bank holding companies for the BAC group and the Cuscatlán group in Panama and their regulation on a consolidated basis significantly reduced the number of banks available to populate last year’s list. Continued acquisitions, such as that of Banco Salvadoreño by Primer Banco del Istmo (Banistmo) in October 2005, and that of Banco de Comercio de El Salvador by Scotiabank El Salvador in May of the same year, has continued the erosion of numbers.
The trend continued in 2006, with Banco Industrial, Guatemala’s largest bank, agreeing to acquire Banco de Occidente, the sixth-largest bank in Guatemala. Further, in January, Banco Industrial announced that it had acquired Banco de Comercio, ranked 14th in Guatemala in our listing. In the same month Banco General in Panama and Banco Continental de Panama announced they would be merging and creating a new entity, BG Financial Group.