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Sabadell United Bank, a Miami based Florida Bank and a subsidiary of Spanish banking giant Banco Sabadell, has just announced improved earnings for the first quarter of 2014.
Sabadell UB achieved net income of US$9.5 million in the March quarter, a sequential increase on the US$5.4 million it earned in the fourth quarter of 2013 – a substantial jump for a relatively small community bank.
The bank was able to achieve all this with an expanded loan portfolio, up by US$117 million to a total of US$2.75 billion. The bank’s deposits also increased to US$3.11 billion at the end of the March quarter, up from US$3.05 billion at the end of 2013.
The President and CEO of Sabadell UB, Mario Trueba, was of course very happy to comment on the results, saying “We began another solid year with steady loan and deposit growth, while maintaining strong capital ratios, ” adding “We expect regulatory approval in the second quarter for our previously announced acquisition of JGB Bank and we look forward to welcoming their clients and employees to Sabadell.”
Just ten days ago the Spanish parent company Banco Sabadell also announced an increase in net income, to about US$112 million for the first quarter of 2014, up 17.5% sequentially and up 58% year on year.
Just five months ago, at the beginning of December, 2013 Columbian born businessman Jaime Gilinski Bacal signed an agreement to sell his JGB Bank to Sabadell UB for US$56 million.
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By no coincidence the name of the bank he is selling is comprised of Mr. Bacal’s own initials. bIn a way though he really sold it to himself, as he had earlier also invested in the parent Spanish bank Banco Sabadell as well as part of a major financing it accomplished in the Fall of 2013.
In September, 2013 Banco Sabadell announced it was raising $1.8 billion of new equity capital through a two-phase stock offering. Banco Sabadell is a major Spanish financial institution with an approximately $250 billion asset base. Sabadell is a city in Catalonia, where the bank’s Spanish headquarters is located.
Jaime Gilinski Bacal purchased shares in the institutional investor phase of the offering, and in the process ended up with a 9% stake in the bank to become the largest single shareholder of the bank.
Then in December the sale of JGB Bank to Sabadell was revealed, with the Chairman of Sabadell UB, Fernando Perez-Hickman, saying at the time he had had his eye on JGB Bank for a while because it had strong core deposit growth and a low cost of deposit funding. Gilinski Bacal’s deal in Spain had opened the door for acquisition talks, which then proved productive.
Mr. Gilinski Bacal also owns Banco GNB Sudameris, a bank with US$15 billion of assets that is one of the largest privately-owned banks in Latin America. It now has branches in six countries after buying the South American operations of HSBC for US$400 million in 2012.
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About Jaime Gilinski Bacal
Jaime Gilinski Bacal is Chairman of his private holding company, JGB Financial Holding Company, which presently also holds his interest in the JGB Bank. According to Forbes Billionaires List he has a personal net worth of US$3.2 billion as of May 2014.
Jaime Gilinski Bacal is originally from Columbia, though today lives in London with his wife Raquel and his family. His father, Isaac Gilinski, made a large fortune with two successful ventures, snack foods maker Yupi and plastics firm Rimax. Following Spanish naming conventions he also carries his mother’s family name Bacal, in his double-barrelled surname.
Galinski Bacal earned his Bachelors Degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1978, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1980. Immediately afterwards he spent a year as an Associate at Morgan Stanley thus learning the language of business in applied settings.
Afterwards, for the next nine years Jaime Gilinski Bacal performed strategic planning functions for a number of companies in the consumer products and snack foods businesses, before gravitating towards the banking business with his first deal as an entrepreneur.
He got into the banking business when he picked up the Colombian assets of the then infamous and notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), for a nominal sum after its’ global collapse. After turning it around and selling it he did the same later with Banco Columbia as well, bringing in George Soros as an investor, then as well and earning the gratitude of the Columbian Government for saving it.
Gilinski Bacal is also a partner in a major real estate development project in Panama, with the London-based brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone through their company London & Regional. The Panama Pacifico project is developing 2, 750 acres outside Panama City into a free trade zone, with office buildings at the PanAmerica Corporate Centre, commercial warehouses in the International Business Park, and condominiums and single family residential construction.
