About

For a number of years international expansion has been a major area of focus for Chile’s BCI, a significant financial institution formed by the Yarur family in 1937, and currently specialises in savings and deposits, securities brokerage, asset management and insurance. The company most recently captured headlines by agreeing to purchase Florida’s TotalBank in a transaction valued at $528m, which is expected to create an entity with consolidated assets of $14bn. The deal adds to BCI’s already strong footprint in the US where the bank owns City National Bank of Florida, which it acquired in 2013. As a traditionally active participant in all transactional work completed by BCI, legal manager Fernando Carmash and his Chile-based legal team have contributed to the transaction by, for instance, obtaining approvals with the Superintendency of Banks, Central Bank of Chile and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the United States. The significance of the contribution of the team to BCI’s strategy is extremely clear, as the transaction forms a major part of the bank’s strategy to build a robust platform that strengthens its operations between the US and Latin America. The department’s contribution to the international expansion strategy at BCI does not stop there, however, as Carmash’s team has also helped the company enter the Peruvian market through a significant infrastructure deal. BCI, in this case, bought a $42.3m stake in a highway project in Peru, making a first important step in establishing presence in the country. According to a source, Carmash and his legal team have ‘been making a significant contribution to a wide range of legal areas within the company’. The source adds that Carmash and his team ‘add value to the organisation’s business strategy, facing complex legal issues with innovative solutions’.