Morales & Besa advised Bank of China in connection with establishing a local branch or agency in Chile

Morales & Besa represented and advised Bank of China Limited in connection with the process of establishing and licensing a local branch or agency in Chile. On 16 August 2017 the SBIF, the banking regulatory and supervisory agency in Chile, issued a resolution granting the Definitive Approval for the establishment of an agency of Bank of China.

This is the penultimate legal step towards the completion of the process, when the SBIG will issue its Final Authorization for the branch to initiate its banking operation and activities in Chile. This is the third banking license granted by the SBIF in the last three years.

Bank of China has funded the initial equity capital of the Branch by the tune of USD$ 60,000,000.

Among its salient features, this assignment involved our firm’s role in bridging Chinese law and Chilean law, two fairly different legal systems, regulatory regimes and banking cultures. In particular, we successfully satisfied the stringent requirements of the SBIF concerning risk management, regulatory reporting and IT systems. In spite of these hurdles, Bank of China and Morales & Besa team were able to obtain the Definitive Approval in a record timing.

The Morales & Besa team that participated in the transaction was composed by partner Guillermo Morales E., senior associate Ignacio Menchaca G. and associate María José Rojas A.