Itaú Unibanco

Itaú Unibanco is a Brazilian publicly quoted bank with headquarters in São Paulo, Brazil. The bank is the result of the merger of Banco Itaú and Unibanco, which occurred on November 4, 2008 to form Itaú Unibanco Holding S.A, the largest financial conglomerate in the Southern Hemisphere and is the 10th largest bank in the world by market value. The bank its listed at the BM&F Bovespa in São Paulo and in NYSE in New York. Currently is the second biggest Brazilian bank by assets, after Banco do Brasil.

Itaú Unibanco owns Rede, the second largest Brazilian card payment company. Itaú Unibanco accounts for about 11% of the Brazilian market for retail banking services. It has operations in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in South America, as well as in the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Portugal in Europe, United States, Japan, China, Hong Kong and United Arab Emirates in Asia. It is the most important subsidiary of Investimentos Itaúsa, a large conglomerate that ranks among Fortune magazine's top 500 corporations in the world. The bank has offices in Asuncion, Buenos Aires, Cayman Islands, Dubai, Hong Kong, Lisbon, London, Luxembourg, Montevideo, Nassau, New York, Santiago, Shanghai and Tokyo On August 22, 2009, Itaú Unibanco and insurance company Porto Seguro disclosed that they had entered into an alliance.

Banco Itaú

Banco Itaú was a former Brazilian bank that merged with Unibanco on November 4, 2008, to form Itaú Unibanco.

History

Banco Itaú began in 1945 under the name Banco Central de Crédito (Central Bank of Credit) and later changed its name to Banco Federal de Crédito (Federal Bank of Credit). In 1964, Banco Federal Itaú S.A. merged Banco Federal de Crédito and Banco Itaú, a rural bank belonging to a group originated in Itaú de Minas, in Minas Gerais countryside. Later that decade, Banco Itaú acquired Banco Sul Americano (1966) and Banco da América (1969).

In the 1970s, it merged with Banco Aliança in Rio de Janeiro (1973), Banco Português do Brasil (1974), and Banco União Comercial (1974). In 1979, it opened its first operations abroad with a representative office in New York and a subsidiary in Buenos Aires.

In the 1980s, it acquired only one small bank, Banco Pinto de Magalhães (1985). Still, this enabled it to continue growing while other Brazilian banks were getting smaller. In 1984, it converted its representative office in New York to a branch.