Grupo Aval Acciones y Valores, SA

Infobox Company
company_name = Grupo Aval Acciones y Valores, S.A.
company_
company_type = Public, Sociedad Anónima
foundation =
location = Bogotá, Colombia
key_people = Luis Carlos Sarmiento
industry = Financial
products = Banking Telecommunications Real estate Investing
revenue =
operating_income =
net_income =
num_employees = 100 (2005)
homepage = [http://www.grupoaval.com/ www.grupoaval.com]

Grupo Aval Acciones y Valores, SA (Grupo Aval) is a Colombian holding company engaged in a wide variety of financial activities, including banking, telecommunications and real estate. Grupo Aval is controlled by Luis Carlos Sarmiento (estimated net worth of $4.4 billion), ["Forbes Magazine", World's Richest People 2006] who directly and indirectly owns more than 90 percent of its shares.

Operations

As a holding company, Grupo Aval owns sufficient amounts of voting stock in other companies to control their policies and management. In addition to its interests in numerous industrial sectors, Grupo Aval controls some of Colombia's top financial organizations, including:
* Banco de Bogotá S.A.
* Banco de Occidente S.A.
* Banco AV Villas S.A.
* Porvenir S.A. - a pension fund administrative company.
* Leasing de Occidente S.A.
* Corficolombiana S.A.

Grupo Aval's internal staff consists of approximately 100 employees, dedicated to analyzing and identifying the most efficient financial and operating practices as well as recommending the implantation of these practices within organizations that the Group controls. To obtain these objectives, Grupo Aval is divided into three business divisions that include: (1) Investments and Strategic Planning, (2) Risk Management, (3) Corporative Services and (3) Technological Information.

History

On April 18, 1997, the Group formally changed its trading name from Administraciones Bancarias S.A. to Sociedad A.B. S.A. On January 8, 1998, the Group once again changed its name to Grupo Aval Acciones y Valores S.A. Later that year, Grupo Aval introduced an Online banking platform, which was integrated within the Group's major banking subsidiaries, Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente, Banco Popular and Banco AV Villas. This innovation allowed clients to either conduct financial transactions on the Internet or in real-time at anyone of the banks branch offices or automated teller machines.

A major milestone occurred during 1999 when Grupo Aval listed their shares publicly on the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia (the Colombian stock exchange) for the first time in the company's history. The Group made a massive initial public offering of 1,200,774,970 shares of common stock between November 1 and December 31, 1999. By December 31, 1999, Aval had 40,042 shareholders. The final result of the IPO was the sale of 312,062,341 shares of common stock, or 2.58 percent of their total, with a fair market value of $58,190,135,296. In 2000, plans to list Grupo Aval on the New York Stock Exchange were postponed due to Wall Street's unfavorable climate for emerging market funds at the time. [Corporate titans: most powerful Latin CEOs: Executive Strategies for the Americas, October, 2000]

As of 2007, Luis Carlos Sarmiento continues to run the company with assistance from his son Luis Carlos Sarmiento Gutierrez, whom he is grooming to eventually assume control of the family conglomerate.

Regulation

The Group is supervised by the Colombian Superintendency of Securities because of its size and because its shares are registered on the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia. [Federal Reserve System, 'Banco de Bogotá S.A., Order Approving Establishment of an Agency'. June 11, 2001]

Notes