Banco Santander

After a short walk to the Austral Group office, the MGLM students met with Mr. Perez from Banco Santander. The presentation and discussion were excellent. I am so proud of our students. They are very knowledgeable and articulate. The banker was impressed with their questions too. Claudia took a group picture and we will post it later.

Pictures from Sunday

The largest building in Latin America

Santiago's Uptown area

This flag is in front of the President's office, basically Chile's White House, and weighs 400 lbs!

The Chilean White House

The Chilean Stock Exchange

Cathedral on the main square in downtown Santiago

Inside the cathedral

Inside the mall at the base of the tallest building. The mall is 5 stories tall and has all kinds of stores and restaurants.

Santander

This morning we met with Martin Perez Pena of Santander, on the the largest banks in Chile, with holdings around the world. Martin is the managing director of corporate and investment banking in Chile. He presented his opinions of why Chile is one of the strongest economies in the world. I was very proud of our students who asked very thoughtful and challenging questions.

This afternoon we are headed to a market and some other cultural excursions. We have another professional encounter this afternoon.

Plaza de Amos

We had a wonderful city tour on the first day in Santiago. My favorite place is Plaza de Amos - Main Square. Yesterday Chile celebrated Dia del Niño - children's day. There were hundreds of families on the square and walking around downtown. Lot' of music, entertainment and laughter. Alan has his five minutes of fame participating in one of the events on the plaza - he was great! Sunday is the day when immigrants gather there as well. There's a huge community of immigrants from Peru. One of the nearby streets has only Peruvian businesses. We had an excellent guide who shared a lot of insights from the Chilean history. Students took tons of pictures and were planning to share them on the blog.

One day down...

What a great start to our Chile experience! Santiago is beautiful and full of culture. I'm sure this will only be amplified tomorrow as we start our business tours and are more exposed to the busy work week. I believe the group will be more alert tomorrow after a good night of sleep.

Santiago Tour

Our August 5th tour of Santiago may have been a brief one, but we were able to see a lot of the history as told by the city's architecture. The financial center of the city for example has a very traditional 18th century typical European style building which is the anchor of the Chilean "Wall Street", but if you look opposite this building, you can see a very modern office building with a sky bridge that connects to yet another modern structure. These 2 pictures were taken from the same spot and looking in opposite directions. The mix of architecture tells a story of a country that is modernizing its infrastructure as well as its business climate, in an attempt to gain an advantage in the world economy. Yet Chile strives to preserve the essence of its national culture and take pride in its rich history.

We are in Santiago!

We made it safely to Santiago. Claudia from the Austral Group met us. Getting ready for a city tour.