Texas,
It isn't so much a case of a dog following another. In general, every wealthy family in DR does business in this way. Bank owners run the banks as if they were their own penny jars. The current crisis is hitting every dominican hard. So, when businesses start to fold, the weak go first.
Despite all the publicity and regulations protecting banks against libel, most of us saw this coming. Baninter, Banco Mercantil and Bancr?dito have always been rumored as unstable. Just last year Bancr?dito/Nacional de Seguros went through a crisis, when owners Donald Reid and the Pelleranos distanced themselves; allegedly because Donald kept syphoning funds to fuel his political apparatus inside the PRSC. That's when Nacional de Seguros became Segna, and the logos changed. Many thought Bancr?dito was done then. In any case, they would have folded for sure if the E. Le?n Jim?nez group hadn't been interested in grabbing a corner of the banking pie. But apparently the Pelleranos tended their pockets first with the sale money, and left the bank hanging. Before that, during Leonel's term, the Pelleranos ran List?n Diario into bankruptcy. They had to sell to Baninter who, being a big bank, could easily absorb the debt inside its obscure bowels until the time was ripe for the catastrophic.....er, sorry, got a big poetic there, but you get the idea.
Anyway, like I say in my original paragraph, every big person here does the same. We don't have big corporate companies. We have what esentially are family-owned businesses where 9 times out of 10 the owners put the companies' earnings straight into their pockets. What was the name of the guy who owned Supermercado Asturias? He fled back to his country without clearing the company's debts. The same with banks: The ones that are still standing are doing the same. If they make it through these bard times we'll never know how they run their books.
It's like that example they use in industry to explain Just-in-time: You never know how many rocks are in the river until the dry season comes. If our river keeps drying, you'll see more and more rocks appear.
