Bloomberg
Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third-largest lender by assets, agreed to acquire Citigroup Inc’s retail and commercial banking operations in Peru.
Citigroup has eight branches and more than 130,000 retail and commercial customers in Peru, the companies said in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed, and both firms said the deal isn’t material to financial results. Citigroup will keep its institutional and private-bank businesses in Peru, Mark Costiglio, a spokesman for the New York-based lender, said in an e-mail. Scotiabank has retail and commercial operations in more than 55 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. The Toronto-based lender’s fourth-quarter profit from international banking declined 31% to C$316mn ($272mn) from a year earlier. “We’re excited about this acquisition because it will allow us to deepen existing customer relationships, serve new customers and increase our market share in credit cards and personal loans in Peru,” Dieter Jentsch, group head of international banking at Scotiabank, said in the statement.
Citigroup said in October it was scaling back consumer banking and exiting certain markets by the end of next year.
