Easter Festivities in Capira

Most of the Templar staff spent last Saturday in Lidice, a small village near Capira.

We were there to put on a nice celebration for the residents of the village, including a village-wide lunch and games and gifts for the kids. The event was a great way to spend Easter, both for both villagers and the Templar staff.

Many of the people of Lidice live in extreme poverty, and the situation in the village was called to our attention by the Bruce Jones Foundation, a children's educational charity, who remembered our Christmas Toy Giveaway.

As our partner, Bruce Jones helped get the kids ready for school with new backpacks and supplies. Mrs. Marta De Martinelli, Presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli's wife, generously volunteered to donate food baskets for families' Sunday dinners. The joint effort allowed us all to do more than we could have separately.

We had a blast getting to know the locals, and went home happy knowing the kids were better prepared for the school year and that the village had a chance to come together for Easter.

Find the full article here.

Two of Panama's largest banks post solid profits for 2008

Panama continues to provide a bright spot on the international finance scene.

At a time when the US is talking about trillions of dollars more in bailouts, "walking dead banks" and the word meltdown still makes the headlines daily, two of Panama's largest banks post solid year-on-year growth.

Banco General reported net profits of 183.68 Million in 2008, up 14.4% from 2007.

Banistmo posted net profits of 100.7 Million in 2008, up 6.2% from 2007.

While there has been some talk of liquidity shortage here in Panama, these numbers demonstrate that financing is not drying up but the banks are simply continuing the stringent, responsible lending and investment policies that have allowed them to continue growing while banks around the world are failing.

Their stability and continued growth now suggests they got it right the first time, and will be able to continue functioning normally while much of the world’s financial sector struggles just to get out of its slump.

There are signs that the recession is slowing, including Goldman Sachs surprisingly strong first quarter-earnings and expected good (or at least not-so-bad) news from large banks, but optimism is tempered while analysts investigate the nature of growth reported by Goldman (which included pushing back its fiscal year-end from November to December, effectively erasing from their books between $1.3 billion in pre-tax losses during that time). The wait-and-see approach remains the majority attitude regard the financial sector.

Comparatively speaking, the solid, consistent growth of Banco General and Banistmo in 2008 is reason to have confidence in the future.

They continue to post profits, ensuring their ability to provide reasonable financing for reasonable projects.

It looks like one of the main pillars of Panama's growth engine -- its robust responsible banking sector -- is performing just as strongly as we expected.

Templar Videos on Youtube!

It's been up for a little while, but Templar has informational videos up on Youtube.

Have a look and feel free to let us know what you think.

Panama Economic Outlook

In 2007-2008 Panama saw stunning growth with 11.2 for 2007 and 8.6 in 2008 (1). According to a January 2009 joint report by Columbia University's International Affairs Online unit and The Economist's Intelligence Unit, the global growth slowdown will affect Panama, but ongoing infrastructure and private sector mega-developments as well as a sturdy banking center will mitigate the effects. The growth rate is projected to be between 3.5 percent and 4.1 percent(2), on par with the IMF's projected world growth rate of 3.7 percent(3), and well above the IMF's most recent projection of 1.4 percent growth for Latin American (4) and a 2 percent contraction in the US economy(2).

Positive market pressures in Panama come from several areas:

• The canal expansion: Financing for the $5.3bn (an estimated 23% of GDP) expansion of the Canal has been secured (5). The project is estimated to create 40,000 jobs in the next 7 years and double the capacity of the canal, a major source of revenue for the country. This coincides with other ongoing infrastructure megaprojects including major road and sewer improvements in Panama City. All of these projects guarantee both immediate financial boost and long-term added value to the country.


• International company relocation: Several Fortune 100 companies, including HP, Proctor and Gamble, Dell, 3M and Caterpillar have opened offices here in the past year, ensuring both an increase in the number of well paid consumers and government revenue. (6)


• Solid finance/banking industry: Panama's banking/finance industry had little involvement with the toxic debt products and irresponsible lending practices (1) (Panama has historically much tighter on financing than the US and European counterparts) currently crippling US and European sectors. This leaves Panama's finance industry in a strong position to continue functioning properly through the ongoing financial downturn.

Overall, Panama is not immune to the world economic climate, but has a solid domestic base to mitigate the effects of the downturn and continue on a solid growth track. The IMF recognizes that in general the developing world will continue to grow far more rapidly than developed economies. Taken together, these factors make Panama a far better option than European and US markets and positions it well ahead of the projected performance of Latin America as a whole.

Sources:

1. International Monetary Fund. IMF executive board concludes 2008 Article IV consultation with Panama. 28 July 2008.
2. CIAO/Economist Intelligence Unit. Panama: Country outlook. 17 January 2009.
3. International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook. April 2008.
4. Brookings Institute. Latin America's Economic Outlook for 2009: No Time for Optimism. 22 January 2009.
5. Trade Finance. "Panama Canal Expansion Signed". 11 December 2008.
6. La Prensa. "17 multinacionales se benefician de Ley 41". 7 January 2009.

My first blog experience: Attack of the web terrorist!

Hello everyone. I'm Martin Lamb, President of Templar Panama's Investment Division. I was planning to write my first blog (ever!) on my favorite Caribbean beach in Panama. However, that dream was overtaken by current events. Templar Panama and I have recently come under attack from a person masquerading as journalist in order to damage our organization and help a rival company, and I need to clear the air before we move on to the fun stuff.

Here’s the story:

My ex-partners at a competing real estate firm here in Panama City have leaked confidential personal information about me to a friend of theirs, blogger Okke Ornstein. Ornstein has since used that grain of truth about my background as the basis for several lies that they hope will hurt us at Templar Panama.

Ornstein is a longtime friend of my ex-partners, who are upset with me because I took my contact list and I notified my clients of my departure from that company. Many of those clients chose to continue doing business with me at Templar. These attacks are my ex-partners’ way of getting even.

So let me take a minute to identify these allegations, sift out that grain of truth and dispel the rest of these nasty rumors.

First, the allegations

I had planned to link my response to the offending pages on the BananamaRepublic blog in order to save time and space, but Mr. Ornstein appears to have lost his site content recently. So, I’ll list the main points here:

• I am a scammer who stole money from old ladies False
• Templar Panama, under my direction, has fraudulently claimed to be selling land near property owned by Mel Gibson False
• Templar Panama hacked Bananama Republic False 

All of above are false, and we are currently pursuing legal action prevent Okke Ornstein from spreading more lies about our company. In the meantime, read on for the true stories behind each of these lies.

Grain of truth: Canada and UGT

The truth at the heart of all this is I was named in a US Federal Trade Commission investigation nearly a decade ago because my Canada-based financial services company, Union Global Trading, processed credit card purchases for several companies found to be running an illegal lottery. At the time it was customary for a financial services company to process transactions without prying into their client’s business. But to this day I sincerely regret that, as the owner of a financial services company, I failed to investigate my clients more thoroughly.

The allegation that I was “stealing money from old ladies” is simply false. My company provided financial services to companies undertaking illegal activities and I failed to properly monitor them. Once I had a look at the evidence of wrongdoing by my clients, I immediately ordered my company to cease doing business with the accused parties and agreed to pay the FTC a settlement to help those harmed by the illegal lottery.

The investigation was settled with neither me nor my companies found guilty of any wrongdoing. Information regarding the inquiry has been publicly available since 2000. News of the settlement was published in 2002.

The most frustrating part for me is that this has never been a secret. The only reason this story has become an such an issue here in Panama is because I disclosed my background in good faith when I signed on as a partner with Mr. Ornstein’s friends. I provided the same disclosure to Templar and to clients who have asked me about the issue after performing their own due diligence.

After I left parted ways with my ex-partners and went to Templar Panama, they allowed their friend to twist this information in order to hurt my new company and me. Ornstein manipulated this truth in an attempt to make me look like a proven scam artist and make Templar look complicit, accusations on which he then based his claim that the Mel Gibson purchase was also a scam.

Which brings me to lie number two…

Regarding Mel Gibson

The idea that Mel Gibson hasn’t bought land in Panama is just wrong. My former partners and I worked with him personally on the sale. Click here for the Panama America newspaper article that confirms Gibson bought land and was here in Panama over Christmas getting things in order (English translation). 

While working at the company, I was the one who put the package together for Mr. Gibson and was in the helicopter flying over the parcel with him when he decided to buy it. Soon after, I left the company over differences regarding payment (they wouldn’t/couldn’t give me my back pay) and how to structure the Gibson deal.

Since the sale was completed, my ex-partners have had trouble collecting their fees because they failed to structure the deal properly, and as Templar continues to succeed they feel the need to attack me.

Templar and hacking

This one is just silly. Something happened to Mr. Ornstein’s website recently and he feels like blaming one of the few organizations that have stood up to his internet bullying. Templar is a real estate firm, not a computer company. I had trouble figuring out how to put up this blog!

I hate to speculate, but it looks as if Mr. Ornstein either lost his own database somehow or his poor journalistic practices upset someone with a little more internet know-how then this Panamanian real estate firm.

Sour grapes

This whole infantile ordeal is nothing more than a case of sour grapes: Templar is going strong, while ex-partners continue to struggle. I apologize if this misinformation has caused Templar or any of our clients distress. Our company is pursuing legal action to have the lies removed from the internet as soon as possible.

Templar believes in transparency and wants all of our customers to have the right information. If you want to learn more about about me or anything else regarding the company, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Whew! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to more exciting and interesting topics!