When a bank expands into a foreign market that is less stable than its own, there are two ways to look at it: focus on the risks, or focus on the new growth potential.
Last year marked just how big Corpbanca’s expansion appetite is for Colombia, a country that has a fast expanding consumer market but that poses higher economic risks than the Corpbanca’s home market of Chile. Only few months after the completion of the $1.23bn acquisition of Santander’s Colombian operations, Corpbanca announced it was going to take over a second, larger lender, Helm Bank, the eight biggest in the country by assets and seventh by Tier 1 capital, in a deal worth $1.28bn.
