Company:SinoLatin Capital

Short description: Chinese bank focused on Latin American investments

SinoLatin Capital

Type	Private
Industry	Financial services
Founded	2009
Founders	Erik Bethel, Luis Gomez Cobo, Rafael Valdez Mingramm
Headquarters	Shanghai
Products	Investment banking, Merchant banking

SinoLatin Capital (2009-2014) was a Shanghai-based-merchant bank founded in late 2008 / early 2009 specializing in private equity and research focused exclusively on cross border transactions between China and Latin America. The firm also provided advisory services related to mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructurings and financings. Additionally, the firm managed a pool capital for private equity investments. The firm was sold to a division of Franklin Templeton.

SinoLatin Capital focused on sectors of strategic importance to Chinese investors, such as oil and gas, mining, agribusiness and forestry.

The firm also produced research on the fundamentals for Sino-Latin trade

The firm was founded in 2009 by Erik Bethel Gonzalez, Luis Gomez-Cobo, Rafael Valdez Mingramm and Jorge Barreda Cruz.

Background

The People's Republic of China instituted its Go Global strategy to encourage its enterprises to invest overseas as China amassed large amounts of foreign reserves. In November 2008, the Chinese government unveiled its policy paper on “Latin America and the Caribbean” which was a call to both sides to increase the dialog and person to person exchanges at every level. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in the frequency of visits by high level Chinese delegations to Latin America and trade agreements signed which lay the groundwork to bridge these two regions together.

Latin America has become of strategic importance as China continues its efforts to secure a long-term supply of commodities to grow its GDP. For example, agriculture in China faces the limitations of having 10% of the world's total arable land support 20% of the world's population, requiring the country to seek secure sources of external food supplies. Additionally, urbanization in China will necessitate that China continue to make large scale strategic investments, whether they be majority or minority stakes in private or public corporations or greenfield projects in the commodities arena.

History

SinoLatin Capital was founded by investment professionals: Erik Bethel Gonzalez, Luis Gomez Cobo, and Rafael Valdez Mingramm:

• Bethel previously worked at Shanghai-based ChinaVest, the oldest private equity fund in Mainland China and in the Latin American mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and private equity groups at Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Partners, Emerging Markets Partnership, and Compass Point Capital Partners.
• Gomez-Cobo co-founded Sinolatin Capital and previously served as CEO of Los Olivos Alimentos, a leading Mexican agribusiness firm. He has wide experience in making private investments and participating in several enterprises, including Los Olivos Alimentos, Saeta Continental, Figo Transport, Empacadora Zan Alfonso, Nueva Tecnología en Alimentación (Nutec), and Ganaderos Productores de Leche Pura (Alpura).
• Valdez-Mingramm co-founded SinoLatin Capital and worked at ChinaVest, as a consultant for ProVentures, a financial advisory firm based in New York and advised The Synergos Institute on sustainable development initiatives along the U.S.- Mexico Border. In January 2011, Mingramm left SLC to pursue other ventures.

On May, 2009 Jorge Barreda joined as Partner of Sinolatin Capital. Previously he was heading the Andean Region effort at UBS Investment Bank, where he was an executive director. Prior to UBS, he was a vice president at Deutsche Bank where he originated capital markets, structured notes and derivatives transactions.

Private equity

In March 2010, SinoLatin Capital set up a subsidiary “Private Equity Investment Management Company,” or, in Chinese, 股权投资管理（上海）有限公司. The license allowed SinoLatin Capital to raise and manage private equity funds denominated in Chinese RMB. SinoLatin Capital was one of the first foreign financial institutions to be granted the license in China. It jined a very small group foreign private equity firms with this status, including The Carlyle Group, Blackstone Group and Apax Partners. SinoLatin Capital was the only Latin America-focused firm that has been approved to manage private equity funds in China.

In 2012, SinoLatin Capital's private equity subsidiary was appointed to manage a pool of equity and debt capital by the Inter-American Development Bank and China Export Import Bank. In 2014, SinoLatin Capital's subsidiary was sold to a division of Franklin Templeton.