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 Business News | February 2007 
Banco Azteca Eyes LatAm Markets
 El Universal
| | Mexico City-based Grupo Elektra started offering banking services such as consumer loans and credit cards in Mexico in 2002. |
Grupo Elektra SA, Mexico´s biggest electronics retailer, is seeking banking licenses in four Latin American countries and may submit applications in three more.
The company´s Banco Azteca unit plans to add 65 branches in Argentina and 22 in Brazil by next year to its 260 existing locations, Luis Niño de Rivera, vice-chairman of the bank´s board, said today in an interview.
Elektra has also requested banking licenses in El Salvador and Peru, and may seek to open locations in Costa Rica, Colombia and Paraguay.
Elektra and its Banco Azteca unit aim to duplicate their success in Mexico, where the Mexico City-based retailer has opened store-based and freestanding bank branches targeting customers who have never had a bank account.
The company has also opened banks in Panama, and is preparing to move into Guatemala and Honduras.
"We´re expanding to diversify our sources of income and our risk," Niño de Rivera said. "Traditional banks are not serving this market."
Mexico City-based Grupo Elektra is part of a group of companies controlled by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas.
It does business in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Peru.
It started offering banking services such as consumer loans and credit cards in Mexico in 2002.
Banking generated 39 percent of Elektra´s 34.8 billion pesos ($3.2 billion) in revenue for 2006. |
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