By Dave Sherwood
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Shareholders of Chile’s Itau Corpbanca voted on Tuesday to approve a capital increase of $1.1 billion to underpin the lender’s growth in the South American nation.
The company said in a filing with Chilean financial regulators in June that the fresh funds would assure “capitalization ratios in line with the main banks in the country.”
Itaú Chile merged with Chilean Corpbanca in 2016. Since the acquisition, Itau has faced an integration that took longer than expected, loan losses, weak profitability and violent protests in Chile.
The capital increase is aimed at bolstering growth, but also assuring compliance with stringent Basel III capital requirements, the bank said.
“We took an important step in the evolution of the bank, we had strong support from our shareholders, and this reinforces that we are on the right path,” Gabriel Moura, Itaú Corpbanca’s CEO, said in the statement.
The bank has operations in Chile, Colombia, Peru and Panama.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Leslie Adler)
