Central de Depósito de Valores, S.A. de C.V.

What it is

CEDEVAL began operations on 3 November 1998 as a financial market infrastructure specialised in the custody, administration, clearing, and settlement of securities in El Salvador. Think of it as the country’s secure electronic vault: every bond or share bought or sold on the Salvadoran exchange is registered, settled, and kept safe inside CEDEVAL’s systems.

CEDEVAL is a private company that forms part of the Salvadoran securities market, operating under the Securities Market Law and the Law on Electronic Book-Entry Securities, under specialised supervision by the Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero. Dematerialisation — the conversion of paper certificates into electronic records — has been in use in El Salvador for more than 15 years, and CEDEVAL drives that process.

Settlement is performed under a gross settlement scheme: CEDEVAL verifies that each selling account holds sufficient securities, then transfers them under a delivery-versus-payment mechanism managed jointly with the exchange. In plain terms: buyer pays, seller delivers, simultaneously and safely — CEDEVAL enforces that guarantee on every trade.

Who owns it

CEDEVAL is a subsidiary of the Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador (BVES), with which it has contracted mutual services at prevailing market rates. The exchange is therefore both its controlling shareholder and its primary client — an unusual but common structure for a depository at this stage of capital-market development.

The board of ten directors, representing the securities market, the private sector, and the financial sector, is the supreme authority elected by the General Shareholders’ Meeting for three-year terms. The current board runs 2023-2026.

The exact ownership split between the BVES and any minority shareholders is not disclosed in available sources; in 2020, no secondary-market share transactions were recorded, indicating the free float is minimal in practice.

Who runs it

Lic. Mariano Novoa serves as both President of the Board and Executive President of the company — he combines the roles of chair and chief executive in a single position, which is standard for El Salvador’s smaller financial infrastructure firms.

Jorge Moreno serves as General Manager.

CEDEVAL is organised under two functional management divisions reporting directly to the General Manager, plus three shared corporate divisions — Legal and Issuances, Administration, and Marketing — that support both CEDEVAL and the exchange. The Audit, Risk, and Compliance committees each meet quarterly.

The money, in plain words

As of year-end 2022 — the most recent audited period from which detailed figures are available — total assets were $3.09M, up 3% from $2.996M in 2021, with 76% of assets held in financial investments whose weighted average yield was 6.35%. CEDEVAL is a tiny company by revenue, but its financial assets are managed conservatively and generate steady returns well above local benchmark rates.

The return on equity (ROE) for 2022 reached 12.5%, while the return on assets (ROA) was 16.9% — both above comparable investment alternatives and higher than the prior two years. For every dollar of equity the owners held, the company earned about 12.5 cents that year, a respectable return for a regulated infrastructure monopoly with very low risk.

Liquidity is exceptionally strong: current assets covered current liabilities 13 times over.

The company closed 2022 with equity of $2.82M, and book value per share reached $56.40 — 41% above the face value of each share, reflecting accumulated retained earnings over two decades of profitable operation. Full 2024 revenue and net profit figures exist in the Memoria de Labores 2024 but the underlying PDF could not be extracted during this research; the 2022 data above are the latest verified primary-source numbers.

What it is doing now

In 2023, CEDEVAL signed a regional integration agreement with Nicaragua, adding it to an existing El Salvador–Panama framework — part of a steady push to let investors buy and sell securities across Central American markets without leaving the region’s infrastructure. In September 2022, CEDEVAL and the BVES, together with Banco Atlántida, launched tradeable deposit certificates (CDN) — an instrument designed to give investors immediate liquidity.

CEDEVAL currently maintains cross-border custody agreements with LatinClear (Panama), InterClear (Costa Rica), Caja de Valores (Guatemala), and CENIVAL (Nicaragua), enabling Salvadoran investors to access and settle international securities locally. The 2024 annual report, published in February 2025, covers governance, operations, and full financial statements for that year and is available on the company’s website.

What to watch

• 2024 financials: The Memoria de Labores 2024 was published in February 2025 but the detailed figures — revenue, profit, equity — have not been independently verified here. Investors should read them directly at cedeval.com.
• Regional integration: Each new Central American depository link expands CEDEVAL’s addressable market without requiring heavy capital investment; the pace of further agreements (Honduras, Dominican Republic) matters.
• CDN uptake: The tradeable deposit certificate, launched in 2022, is a volume driver; how quickly it scales will determine near-term revenue growth.
• Regulatory environment: CEDEVAL is supervised by both the Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero and the Banco Central de Reserva; any change to capital or liquidity requirements affects its lean balance sheet directly.
• Ownership concentration: With the BVES as controlling shareholder and essentially no active free float, minority investors have limited price discovery and exit options — a governance risk worth monitoring.

This is news, not investment advice.