Lan Airlines to list shares on Peruvian Exchange

Lan Airlines SA, Latin America’s biggest airline by market value, plans to list shares in Peru as the region’s issuers and exchanges seek to increase trading volume and lure foreign investors.

Lan Airlines SA, Latin America’s biggest airline by market value, plans to list shares in Peru as the region’s issuers and exchanges seek to increase trading volume and lure foreign investors.

“Among Lan’s plans is a listing on the Lima Stock Exchange,” the Santiago-based carrier wrote today in an e-mail. Details of the listing “are being studied,” it wrote in response to questions.

Lan would join Ecopetrol SA, Colombia’s state-controlled oil company, on the Peruvian exchange as regulators in Chile, Colombia and Peru work on rules to enable cross-border stock trading. Bancolombia SA, the country’s largest lender, also plans to list in Peru, according to Luis Felipe Arizmendi, president of Lima-based brokerage GPI Valores.

“We’re bringing Lan and Bancolombia to trade in Lima as part of the drive to integrate the Lima, Colombia and Chile exchanges,” Arizmendi, whose firm is managing the listing, said in an interview in Lima. “It will increase liquidity and trading volume on the exchange.”

A Bancolombia spokeswoman who asked not to be named because of company policy declined to comment.

The three countries’ regulatory agencies agreed on Oct. 28 to establish rules for clearing, safekeeping and supervising of cross-border transactions. The securities exchanges signed an agreement Sept. 8 formalizing their intention to integrate operations by the end of next year.

Lan Trading

Lan trades in Santiago, New York and Frankfurt, according to Bloomberg data. The airline and its affiliates operate flights in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador, as well as the U.S., Europe and the South Pacific, according to its Web site. The shares have gained 42 percent this year in Chile, compared with a 40 percent advance in the Ipsa index.

Ecopetrol’s existing American depositary receipts will start trading in Lima in “coming days,” it wrote in a statement distributed today by PRNewswire.

Peru’s Lima General Index has surged 103 percent this year, the fourth-best performance among 90 global benchmark gauges tracked by Bloomberg, as a recovery in commodity demand boosted mining companies such as Southern Copper Corp. and Volcan Cia. Minera SA.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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