The majority of Puerto Rico’s banks will remain closed today, in observance of Memorial Day, resuming operations Tuesday.
Private equity firm Advent-Morro announced Tuesday it is investing $5 million in pawnshop chain La Familia to support its expansion plans in Florida and Puerto Rico.
Insurance provider Medical Card Systems Inc. recently completed a $600,000 investment to open three new customer service offices in Bayamón, Vega Alta and Naranjito that will benefit a combined 342,000 insured customers along the northern-central region, company officials said.
Despite the fact that the San Juan Superior Court placed National Insurance Corp. under trusteeship this week, the company’s interim management is giving employees and affiliated insurance agencies a positive outlook on the situation.
Four months after announcing its intention of selling some $500 million in non-performing construction and commercial real estate loans to a newly created joint venture with an unrelated third party, Popular Inc. said Thursday it has walked away from the deal.
FirstBank Puerto Rico recently sold a couple of office buildings in Fort Lauderdale for $2.3 million, or 62 percent off their foreclosed mortgage value, according to the South Florida Business Journal.
Local drugstore operator Farmacia Sally has secured a $1.5 million loan from Scotiabank de Puerto Rico to build a second location in Río Grande that will be completely “green,” company officials said.
The island’s reverse mortgage market is getting more competitive this week with the arrival of Atlanta-based Generation Mortgage, which is introducing its retail banking services to the market.
A month after insurance rating agency A.M. Best Co. downgraded National Insurance Company’s financial standing, the Office of the Puerto Rico Insurance Commissioner has stepped in to intervene with the insurance provider’s operations.
Health insurance provider MCS is expanding the scope of its Wellness Institute initiative to include more businesses looking to establish in-house programs to promote health in their workplaces. At present, there are 50 companies participating in the MCS program launched in November 2010.
The State Insurance Fund recently signed off on a $242 million loan from Banco Santander Puerto Rico to refinance a prior loan that was in default and for ongoing improvements planned at the government agency.
First BanCorp continued its path of negative quarterly growth, reporting a net loss of $28.4 million for the first quarter of 2011. However, the result for the period ended March 31 reflected a marked improvement from the $251.4 million net loss reported for the fourth quarter of 2010 and the $107 million net loss for the first quarter of 2010.
Oriental Bank, one of only several financial institutions doing business in Puerto Rico that weathered last year’s banking debacle, reported $13.1 million in net income for the first quarter of 2011, up 4.7 percent from the same period last year.
Buoyed by a reduction in the island’s corporate tax rate and the sale of its equity stake in Consorcio de Tarjetas Dominicanas, S.A., Popular Inc. on Monday reported net income of $10.1 million for the first quarter ended March 31, an improvement over the net loss of $85.1 million during the same period the year before.
Doral Financial Corp., parent company of Doral Bank, released quarterly results Wednesday that reflected $3.3 million in net income for the period ended March 31, a marked improvement from the $36.1 million in net losses on record for the prior quarter ended Dec. 31, 2010.
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