Scotiabank to offer U.S. private-banking to Caribbean, L. American clients. The Bank of Nova Scotia -- also known as Scotiabank -- has opened a private-client center in Miami as a hub for its wealth-management business in the Caribbean and Latin America. The Canadian bank's Scotia Private Client Group center in Miami will provide U.S.-based private-banking services exclusively to non-U.S. residents and non-U.S. citizens.

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"This is another way to the Scotia Private Client Group is fulfilling its commitment to provide dedicated and differentiated service to clients," says Dan Wright, Scotiabank's international wealth-management chief. "Scotia Private Client Group draws on its worldwide network of experts to provide individual guidance tailored to individual needs, and we are pleased that this network now encompasses access to the U.S. banking system."

Toronto-based Scotiabank has historical ties to the Caribbean that go back to its roots as a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based merchant bank that helped lubricate the trade of lumber and fish from Atlantic Canada for West Indian cane sugar and its by-products. Much more recently, the bank has established private-client centers in Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Peru -- and it plans to open centers in Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama.

Being on the ground in these counties helps Scotiabank meet their clients' "complex financial needs on an international level," according to Alan Jenkins head of Scotiabank's new private-client center in Miami. "This office will allow for convenience and ease of access to the U.S. banking system for our Latin American and Caribbean clientele and allow us to remain competitive in the market." -FWR

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