Banking on Miami: the CEO of the US arm of one of Central America's biggest banks is betting on the future of South Florida—because it is so intimately tied to the region's markets - BAC Bank of Florida

South Florida CEO, Oct, 2003 by Johanna Marmon

With $700 million in assets and $580 million in deposits, Coral Gables-based BAC Bank of Florida--the US arm of the Nicaragua-based Grupo BAC Credomatic--is considered one of South Florida's leaders in real estate finance for foreign investors, says CEO Thomas Noonan. "We're in the business of helping foreigners diversify their real estate holding," he says. "It's always US real estate, most of it in Florida." BAC, which also has the largest credit-card operation in Central America, does some correspondent banking and trade finance. But the lion's share of the bank's business is "an amalgam of private banking and real estate finance," Noonan says.

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Noonan, the new president of the Florida International Bankers Association (FIBA), says that while BAC is doing well, he is concerned with the economies of Latin America. Slow growth there is one reason that international banking as a whole continues to slip in South Florida; according to the Florida Department of Financial Services, deposits in the second quarter dropped from US$13.3 billion in the same quarter 2002 to US$12.9 billion. Assets, in the same periods, dropped from US$14.8 billion to US$14.1 billion.

"We are, of course, concerned with the overall economic growth rate in Latin America," Noonan says. "It's definitely slowed down, and since Miami is the financial center for Latin America, you can't outgrow the growth of your market. It's always been cyclical."

Even so, Noonan says, "South Florida is the right place for our kind of institution ... we're looking at continuing growth over the next five to eight years." Wearing his FIBA hat, he notes that locating the FTAA's permanent secretariat in Miami would prove a boon for international banks here. "It would dramatically increase, over time, the amount of people coming here to do things related to their business and international trade," Noonan says. "The best model I can think of is Brussels, the European Union headquarters. Little by little it is not the sleepy little provincial capital it once was ... Miami has that opportunity."

BAC, which in 2002 formed investment advisory subsidiary BAC Global Advisors, recently moved its headquarters from Miami's Brickell Avenue to Coral Gables, known as Greater Miami's home for multinational corporations.