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FINANCIER: ALVARO SAIEH (int'l edition)Bank profits and share prices are taking a drubbing in Latin America. That's a buying opportunity for Corp Group, a Chilean-based financial conglomerate. After screening more than 30 potential targets, it plans to buy two banks by yearend to add to a network that encompasses Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Peru. Corp Group is helping to strengthen Latin banking by imposing U.S. practices throughout its operations. ''Our standards are the same as those of an American bank,'' says President Alvaro Saieh, 48, a University of Chicago PhD. Despite the region's financial drought, deep-pocketed shareholders sustain Saieh's cross-border push. Corp Group is 54% owned by an investor group led by Saieh, a former economic research chief at Chile's Central Bank and a former dean of the University of Chile's economics school. The other 46% is held by Chase Capital Partners, National Bank of Canada, and U.S. private equity firms Blackstone Group and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. An arts patron who lectures at Latin American and U.S. business schools, Colombia-born Saieh was one of the ''Chicago Boys'' who launched Chile's economic reforms in the late 1970s under dictator Augusto Pinochet. He and his partners set up Corp Group last year. It owns Provida, Chile's biggest pension manager, and has stakes in life insurers and banks stretching across seven countries. Saieh notes that the banks' vulnerability to economic downturns is offset by the more stable businesses. While his banks may retrench, insurance premiums and pension contributions will keep rolling in.
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Updated Oct. 15, 1998 by bwwebmaster
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