Grupo Financeiro Galícia

Grupo Financiero Galícia S.A.

Type	Sociedad Anónima
Traded as	: GGAL NASDAQ: GGAL
Industry	Financial Services
Founded	1905
Headquarters	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Key people	Antonio R. Garcés, (Chairman & CEO)
Products	Retail Banking Offshore banking Insurance Investments Mortgages Consumer Finance Credit cards Warehousing
Revenue	US$1.6 billion (2012)
Net income	US$272.1 million (2012)
Total assets	US$ 12.9 billion (2012)
Number of employees	5,591
Website	www.gfgsa.com

Grupo Financiero Galicia is a financial services holding company based in Buenos Aires, and its banking operations are the fifth largest in Argentina, as well as the largest among all domestically-owned private banks in the country.

The bank was founded in 1905 as the Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires by a consortium led by Manuel Escasany, a jeweler and clock maker of Galician origin. The name referred to the Galician heritage of the Escasanys, the largest original shareholders, as well as to the Spanish Argentine immigrant community from that region (who were second only to Italian Argentines in number).

The bank maintained over 2,500 accounts by the end of its first year, and in 1907, it was listed on the and garnered nearly 3,300 initial shareholders. The Buenos Aires branches were followed by one in neighboring Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1910, and in 1921, it began offering time deposits (which remain the most common form of savings among the Argentine public).

Following the founder's death in 1948, his son, Eduardo Escasany, became its president and by 1960, he had secured a partnership with the Ayerzas and the Brauns, two influential local families prominent in the Argentine ranching and retail sectors, respectively. The Banco de Galicia became the largest, domestically-owned private bank in Argentina in 1965 and by 1975, ranked second to the public National Mortgage Bank in new home loans, and employed around 3,900 staff in 93 branches, nationwide. Banco de Galicia in 1993 became the first Latin American bank to enter both the U.S. and European stock markets, and the first to raise funds on the U.S. domestic capital market by floating a $200 million, ten-year Yankee bond. The following year it was the first to issue convertible bonds on the international securities market, enabling the bank to remain in Argentine hands at a time when many of its rivals were sold to Spanish banks. A branch was opened in New York in 1994, and the group acquired a one-eighth share in the newly privatized postal service. Banco Galicia established an insurance company, Sudamericana Holding S.A., in 1996 as a joint venture with The Hartford.