Partners David Arturo Campos B. and Mario Quesada Bianchini along with Senior Associate Randall Barquero Leon of Consortium - Lacle & Gutierrez, acted as legal counsel to Citibank, leading the process of integration and merger of Citibank, Cuscatlan and Uno’s financial groups in Costa Rica. Cristina Alfaro Serdio acted as in-house counsel to Citi. The merger process was approved by the Superintendency of Financial Institutions and by the National Stock Exchange of Costa Rica, effective November 3^rd, 2008.

This merger is part of the process of regional integration of the referred financial groups in the Central American region. Consortium - Lacle & Gutierrez advised the regulatory, registration and business matters of a process without precedent in the Costa Rican financial market for the simultaneous merger of three financial groups with three different business lines.

According to Edgardo del Rincon, responsible for the regional integration process “it (the process) formed a powerful financial group with the capacity of providing services to all the market segments, and of increasing the supply of products and services…”

Mario Quesada Bianchini, partner in charge of the merger, commented: “… it is the result of a long process that involved several members of the law firm, Citi’s in-house counsel and the legal overview of Citi Latin America regional counsel, with the guidance of the Costa Rican regulators. From a legal point of view it established a precedent that will serve as a reference for future processes of this nature…”

As a result of the above, the following entities were merged:

(i) Corporación Citibank GFC, S.A. Grupo Financiero Uno GFU, S.A. and Grupo Financiero Cuscatlan de Costa Rica, S.A., the latter prevailing and changing its name to Grupo Financiero Citibank de Costa Rica, S.A., controlling entity of the resulting financial group.

(II) Banco Uno, S.A. and Banco Cuscatlan de Costa Rica, S.A., the latter prevailing and changing its name to Banco Citibank de Costa Rica, S.A.

(III) Citivalores Puesto de Bolsa, S.A. and Valores Cuscatlan Puesto de Bolsa, S.A., the latter prevailing and changing its name to Citi Valores Accival, S.A.

In addition, the names of the remaining subsidiaries of the prevailing financial group were changed to include Citi’s denomination.