Mercantile Investment Corporation (Bolivia) S.A.

What it is

Merinco is a Bolivian investment company whose holdings are spread across banking, retail, industry, mining and, most prominently, tourism. Its stated purpose is investment activity across all branches of industry, commerce, services, banking and any other activity permitted by Bolivian law.

The company’s most visible asset is its participation in the Ritz Hotel of Bolivia. That hotel interest is the public face of what is otherwise a quiet, unleveraged holding structure that rarely makes headlines.

Merinco was constituted by public deed No. 44/90 on 10 May 1990 and registered in Bolivia’s Commercial Registry on 26 June 1990. On the Bolivian stock exchange (BBV), it trades under the ticker MIN.

Who owns it

ASFI’s official register of listed shares, dated 31 December 2025, records Mercantile Investment Corporation (Bolivia) S.A. with a total registered capital of BOB 17,564,000 (US$2 mn)— 17,564 shares at a nominal value of BOB 1,000 (US$102)each. That translates to roughly USD 1.78 million at the current exchange rate of 9.85 bolivianos per dollar (our calculation).

The identity of the controlling shareholder and the precise ownership split are not disclosed in available public sources; the bond prospectus references an internal shareholder table (Cuadro N°5) but its contents were not reproduced in the documents retrieved. Any investor requiring that breakdown should request it directly from the company or from ASFI’s physical registry.

Who runs it

The most recent primary-source document to name the executive team is the 2015 ASFI bond prospectus. That prospectus identifies Ernesto Javier Mitre Quevedo as Gerente General (Chief Executive) and Luis Lilsen Cordero Betancourt as Gerente Administrativo Financiero (Chief Financial Officer).

Whether these appointments remain current cannot be confirmed from available sources; the company has not published a more recent governance disclosure that is freely accessible online.

The bond structuring agent on the BBV market was Mercantil Santa Cruz Agencia de Bolsa S.A., Bolivia’s top-ranked brokerage by volume, which has longstanding ties to Merinco’s debt issuances.

The money, in plain words

Merinco is a holding company, not an operating business, so its “income” is largely dividends and capital gains flowing up from its investee companies — a structure that makes headline revenue figures less meaningful than for a factory or a bank. Audited financial statements for recent years are not freely available in any source retrieved, including the BBV and ASFI portals; the most recent detailed figures in a public document are from the 2015 bond prospectus, which covered fiscal years 2012–2014.

What is clearly on record is the company’s debt programme: the total bond programme authorised by ASFI amounts to USD 7.5 million. The most recently traced emission (Emission 4) carried a fixed annual interest rate of 3.00%.

That is a low cost of debt, which speaks to the AA3 credit rating assigned to earlier emissions — meaning lenders regard Merinco as a highly capable payer, though at the lower end of the “AA” category.

What it is doing now

The most recent disclosed board decision was approval of the sale of a property on Avenida San Martín in the Equipetrol district of Santa Cruz de la Sierra — a 528-square-metre plot registered under Folio Real No. 7.01.1.99.0146102 — to Empresa Constructora e Inmobiliaria Pacífico S.A., with representatives authorised to sign transfer documents. A property disposal of this kind is consistent with a holding company trimming non-core real estate to redeploy capital or reduce debt.

What to watch

• Financial disclosure. Merinco is one of the least transparent listed companies on the BBV; the publication of any audited annual report or memoria anual would be the single most important development for outside investors.
• Ownership clarity. Until the controlling shareholder and free-float percentage are disclosed, pricing the shares rationally is impossible — even for professionals.
• The Ritz Hotel. Bolivia’s tourism sector is tightly linked to the country’s wider economic stability and foreign-currency availability; any shift in hotel revenues or a transaction involving the Ritz stake would directly move Merinco’s underlying value.
• Bolivia’s economic backdrop. The country faces persistent foreign-currency shortages and fiscal pressure; a holding company with USD-denominated bonds (even now largely repaid) and cross-sector equity stakes is sensitive to both exchange-rate risk and credit conditions at its investee banks and businesses.

This is news, not investment advice.