JUST A FEW years ago, many investors might have sneered at the kind of grand business plans now being discussed in the boardrooms of central America: Panama as the Singapore of the Americas? A Nicaraguan trans-oceanic canal? Honduras as an international textiles hub? Scorn at such proposals is outdated, reckon those bullish about the region. "That’s the old mindset," says Costa Rican businessman Daniel Carillo, whose canned fruit export company has doubled its sales to the US over the past three years. "Central America isn’t about civil wars and poverty any more. It’s a rapidly integrating market of 40 million people," he adds.
Enter global banks HSBC and Citigroup. As central Americans grow more prosperous, open bank accounts, and look to save and seek credit, both banks want a piece of the central American boom-town action and are preparing to fight each other for...
