Moody's Investors Service downgraded Chilean bank CorpBanca on Friday, citing fears about the impact on the bank of problems at a linked business also owned by billionaire Alvaro Saieh. The downgrade comes at a time when the bank is in the midst of merger talks, according to several sources.CorpBanca is part of Chilean businessman Saieh's financial empire, along with retailer SMU, which revealed accounting errors that led it to breach covenants earlier this year.He has since been seeking to raise cash and has been in New York this week negotiating a merger for CorpBanca, with the front-runners being Spain's BBVA SA and Brazil's Itau Unibanco Holding SA, three sources told Reuters on Wednesday.Moody's downgraded CorpBanca's global, local and foreign currency deposits and debt ratings to Baa3 from Baa2 and left them on review for further downgrade.
Itau Unibanco Holding SA is a Brazil-based holding active in the banking sector. Shares of ITUB traded higher by 2.34% or $0.31/share to $13.56. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $11.38 and as high as $17.34. On average, 10383900 shares of ITUB exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 12131779.
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