CorpBanca, the fifth-largest lender in Chile and the country’s oldest operating bank, announced this week it has agreed to pay $1.28 billion to take control of Colombia’s Helm Bank. As part of the deal, Bloomberg reports that an affiliate of CorpBanca will pay an additional $17 million for an 80 percent stake in an insurance unit owned by Helm Bank.
Once completed the deal will establish CorpBanca, which is controlled by Chilean billionaire Alvaro Saieh, as the sixth-largest bank in Colombia. The deal follows CorpBanca’s move late last year to buy Spanish banking giant Banco Santander’s Colombian operations for $1.23 billion.
