Headquarters of the Banco de la Nación in front of the
Plaza de Mayo
Banco de la Nación Argentina (English: Bank of the Argentine Nation) is a state-owned bank in Argentina, and the largest in the country's banking sector.
Overview
The bank was founded in 1891 by President Carlos Pellegrini on a site previously occupied by the first building to house the Teatro Colón. Its current president is Gabriela Ciganotto, who stated the main goal of the BNA in her inauguration speech as "putting [the bank] at the service of production, especially small and medium businesses, and not of speculation."[1]
The bank's reputation suffered after it was revealed that bribes had been received by the board of directors in 1994 when contacting IBM for the supply of computers, software, and communication equipment, becoming a prominent scandal during the administration of Carlos Menem.[2]
Its headquarters in the San Nicolás section of Buenos Aires, designed by local architect Alejandro Bustillo in 1938, was built in a revivalist French neoclassical style, and inaugurated in 1952.[3] The bank maintains 623 branches throughout Argentina and 15 branches abroad in 10 different countries (Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, Santiago in Chile, Asunción in Paraguay, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil, Panama City in Panama, Georgetown in the Cayman Islands, New York City and Miami in the United States, Madrid in Spain, and Caracas in Venezuela)[4], along with a representation office in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It employs about 16,000 people in Argentina and more than 200 abroad.[5]
According to an independent survey of Latin American banks conducted by Management & Excellence on behalf of Latin Finance magazine (Latin Finance Banking Directory 2005), the BNA ranked last in the survey, achieving a final score of 8.8 in ethics and transparency out of 100. Banco Nación won low marks for ethics, sustainability, corporate governance and transparency. [6]
The bank in 2006 ranked 278th in the world in terms of tier one capital (US$ 1.623 billion) according to The Banker global survey of top 1000 world banks, a Financial Times publication.[7] Domestically, however, it has long been Argentina's largest bank, and as of September 2008, it maintained around US$20 billion in deposits (a quarter of the domestic total) and a loan portfolio of US$7 billion (15% of the domestic total).[5]
References
External links
Coordinates: 34°36′26″S 58°22′17″W / 34.60722°S 58.37139°W / -34.60722; -58.37139
