Lisbon, Portugal, 5 Jan – The Brazilian bank owned by Portuguese financial group Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) is set to open in the next few months and is expected to be called Banco Caixa Geral, a name used by CGD in Spain since 2006, Portuguese daily newspaper Diário de Notícias reported.

The new CGD group bank, which is awaiting authorization from the Brazilian Central Bank, will be the group’s second abroad to adopt the Banco Caixa Geral name, which is due to the group’s considering merging its international operations.

As well as Spain and Brazil, the Portuguese bank ahs retail banking operations in Cape Verde (Banco Interatlantico and Comercial Atlantico), Macau (BNU), South Africa (Mercantil), and Mozambique (BCI-Fomento).

In Brazil, the Banco Caixa Geral authorization process is in its final stages after CGD handed in its business plan to the central bank.

The new bank, which will not have a large retail network, will, according to the newspaper, start out with one or two office sin strategic locations, and will focus on investment banking, corporate and private banking and on the transfer business.

In the first nine months of 2006, the consolidated profit of the CGD group totaled 555.2 million euros, against 423.9 million in the same period of the previous year, which represented an increase of31 percent.

In 2005, the CGD group sold a 12.3 percent stake in Brazilian bank Unibanco, which it had acquired in 2000. (macauhub)