BankBoston Brasil will increase its focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) this year by opening 25 new SME-targeted business centres, according to the bank's president Geraldo Carbone. BankBoston has centred its SME focus on companies with annual billing up to 20m reais (US$6.9m)
BankBoston has opened 10 business centres for SMEs during the last 12 months and signed up 12,000 clients during that period, Carbone said.
Carbone said lending in the SME segment has registered an average annual growth of between 25% and 30%. On Thursday US banking giant Bank of America announced that it had completed its merger with BankBoston's US parent FleetBoston. Although the new bank's international strategy has yet to be defined, Brazil is likely to remain a priority market, Carbone said, adding that BankBoston has run a highly profitable operation in Brazil with a return on equity (ROE) of 21% last year.
