Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, the private equity arm of the investment bank, has made its first deal backed by its third fund which closed at $2.7bn (€2.1bn) five months ago.

Bear Stearns has bought the Latin American consumer finance subsidiaries of Wells Fargo, the US bank, which offers unsecured personal loans, sales finance and credit insurance products to individuals in Panama, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles, Trinidad & Tobago and Mexico.