Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday he intends to nationalize the Bank of Venezuela, which is owned by the Santander Central Hispano banking group of Spain.
“We are going to take back the Bank of Venezuela to put it at the service of Venezuelans,” Chavez said in a televised address.
Chavez said he decided to nationalize after learning that Santander had contacted a local bank to sell the institution. He said the local bank asked for authorization from the government, but that he, “as the head of state,” nixed the sale.
“Now sell it to the government,” Chavez said.
A Bank of Venezuela spokesperson — speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue — told reporters that the bank has no other information and heard of the nationalization on television.
Santander purchased the Bank of Venezuela in 1996. The financial institution is the country’s third-largest bank — after Banesco Banco Universal and Banco Mercantil — with nearly 3 million customers and some US$11 billion in assets.
Asdrubal Oliveros, an economist at Ecoanalitica, a Caracas consulting firm, said he doesn’t think others are at risk of government takeover.
“I don’t believe we’re going to see Chavez nationalizing banks and banks and banks,” Oliveros said.
Economist Pavel Gomez said the nationalization would give the government a “financial arm” that it could use to affect monetary policy by “financing sectors it considers strategic or lowering interest rates.”
Chavez had threatened to nationalize Venezuelan subsidiaries of Spanish banks after Spanish King Juan Carlos told him to “shut up” at a summit last November.
But just last week he wrapped up a European tour with a hug-and-kiss makeup visit to Spain, where he was greeted warmly by the king at his summer residence on the island of Mallorca.
Under Chavez’s governance, Venezuela also has nationalized its largest telephone, electricity, steel and cement companies and has assumed majority control over four major oil projects.
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