Listin Diario highlights that Scotiabank will close this year’s operations with profits of RD$1.8 billion, which is equivalent to 50% of the profits to be generated by all other local banks collectively. Scotiabank benefited from the concession granted (without a tender) of Baninter’s better client portfolio plus 35 of its most profitable branches. Listin Diario, the newspaper that formed part of Baninter’s assets and was only recently returned to Baninter’s former owners by the Fernandez administration, headlines that the financial statements of all the other commercial banks together show a profit of about RD$4 billion as of 31 September. The newspaper points out that, prior to the Baninter deal, in its previous 83 years in operation in the DR, the Canadian bank had never made more than RD$200 million in one year. In 2003, the government transferred Baninter’s operations to Scotiabank, ranked 6th in the country, following the official intervention in the bank’s dealings for mismanagement and fraud. The newspaper observes that one of the downsides of Scotiabank’s takeover of Baninter’s interests is that most of the dividends will now be expatriated, which would not be true were it a local entity.