By Eileen A. Mencias

American bank Wachovia is closing its representative office in Cebu, Bangko Sentral sources said.

Central bank sources said the bank was informed of the closure of Wachovia?s Cebu representative office early in December, prior to the Wells Fargo acquisition. The sources partly attributed the closure of the Cebu representative office to business slowdown, especially the downturn in exports.

Wells Fargo is acquiring Wachovia, resulting in the latter?s credit rating upgrade.

A representative office is essentially a listening post and is a notch lower than an offshore banking unit, which is allowed to accept foreign currency deposits.

Wachovia is also among the principal shareholders of GenPact, a leader in the globalization of services and a pioneer in managing business processes for companies around the world.

Wachovia started its call center operations in the Philippines last year through GenPact but said it was maintaining its 13 call center sites in the US. Wells Fargo?s acquisition of Wachovia, however, could result in changes in its operations.

The global financial turmoil triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers in September has wreaked havoc on the global economy, beginning with banks and other financial institutions.

Standard Chartered Bank announced it was closing down two branches in the Philippines and repositioning another.

The UK-owned Standard Chartered Bank was the first foreign bank to open shop in the Philippines. It is closing its Caloocan and Quezon City branches on Jan. 9, Friday and is set to reposition its Cebu branch.

Standard Chartered Bank started operations in the Philippines in 1872, three years ahead of another British bank, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp.

Standard Chartered has six branches in the Philippines.

Standard Chartered reported a return on equity of 8.45 percent in the first half of the year, compared with HSBC Philippines? 23.98 percent, ING?s 20.82 percent and Citibank?s 15.3 percent. ING is limited to only one branch in the country. The return on equity is a measure of a bank?s profitability.

Citibank, which opened in the country in 1902, has six branches and is merging its savings bank and Citifinancials, which have 36 and 15 branches, respectively.

HSBC has eight branches, and while its savings bank, which it bought in 2000, has 16.