The story
Founded by Luis Carlos Sarmiento in 1998.1
On April 18, 1997, the group formally changed its trading name from Administraciones Bancarias S.A. to Sociedad A.B. S.A. On January 8, 1998, the company once again changed its name to Grupo Aval Acciones y Valores S.A. Later that year, Grupo Aval introduced an online banking platform, which was integrated within the group's major banking subsidiaries: Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente, Banco Popular and Banco AV Villas. This innovation allowed clients to conduct financial transactions either on the Internet or in real time at any of the banks' branch offices or automated teller machines.
A major milestone occurred during 1999 when Grupo Aval listed its shares publicly on the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia (the Colombian stock exchange) for the first time in the company's history. The group made an initial public offering of 1,200,774,970 shares of common stock between November 1 and December 31, 1999. By December 31, 1999, Aval had 40,042 shareholders. The final result of the IPO was the sale of 312,062,341 shares of common stock, or 2.58 percent of the total, with a fair market value of $58,190,135,296. In 2000, plans to list Grupo Aval on the New York Stock Exchange were postponed due to Wall Street's unfavorable climate for emerging market funds at the time.
As of 2007, Luis Carlos Sarmiento continued to run the company with assistance from his son Luis Carlos Sarmiento Gutierrez, whom he was grooming to eventually assume control of the family conglomerate.
Due to GE Capital focusing on industrial activities rather than retail banking, the group acquired the BAC|Credomatic Network from GE Consumer Finance for US$1.9 billion in July 2010.
Grupo Aval made a debut global offering of $600 million in February 2012 with advisory assistance from New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.
From Wikipedia’s article on Grupo Aval, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5