The bank, owned by Colombia's Grupo Aval has bought Grupo Financiero, which includes Banco Reformador in Guatemala and Transcom Bank Limited of Barbados.
The only thing now pending is approval of this transaction by the financial market's supervisory authorities in the country. According to the general manager of BAC San José in Costa Rica, Gerardo Corrales, the intention of this purchase is to strengthen corporate banking in the Guatemalan market..
Private banks operate with margins between interest rates which are considerably lower than state banks.
An article in Elfinancierocr.com points out that "the five banks with the lowest margins in the country are private ones, as is clear from a study by EF based on data reported to the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (Sugef) for December, 2012 ".
Some entities said they would be willing to declare their individual data if the Sugef removes the restriction.
Since the weekly newspaper El Financiero filed a lawsuit pushing for banks to publish their capital adequacy indicators, the issue has been debated by the General Superintendency of Financial Institutions (Sugef) and the banking market.
Following this, a group of banks have said they would not object to disclosing the information, as long as the publications are endorsed by Sugef.
Nine of the eleven private banks operating in the market generated fewer profits in 2010 than in 2009.
The data published by the Superintendence of Financial Institutions (SUGEF), dos not provide information on Bansol, which began operations in November 2010.
"Private banks were mainly affected by the 9% drop of the dollar in 2010, as most of their assets are in that currency," reported the article in Nacion.com, "Since financial statements are done in Colones, transferring their assets from Dollars into Colones results in a lower valuation due to lost value in the price of the currency."