Who will buy Banamex?
Bloomberg reported that the last businessman negotiating the sale of the bank is Germán Larrea, who owns Grupo México and Cinemex.
Sources told that medium that the purchase will be for 80% of the business and that it will cost 7.100 million dollars, an amount that has been considered “high” by Credit Suisse analysts.
The first valuations of analysts were around that the bank could have a cost of up to 8,000 million dollars. Either way, the figure is less than the $12.5 billion Citigroup paid in 2001.
Credit Suisse and Moody’s have said that Grupo México lacks experience in the banking business, so it will be essential to keep the staff to guarantee profitability for the new business.
The business that is for sale is the retailer, that is, the one that attends to the insurance business, the Afore business and credit cards, payroll, housing and SMEs. The entire network of branches and ATMs as well as the cultural and historical heritage are also for sale.
In the announcement that Citgroup made in 2022, it was established that the sale would be made in a single transaction, but now there is uncertainty as to which parts of the business could be sold on the Stock Exchange.
This has happened with Grupo México
Grupo México was one of the surprises during the sale of Banamex because the interested parties used to be businessmen with experience in banking or who belonged to the financial system.
As the other financial groups were getting off the purchase, Larrea obtained a loan of 5,000 million dollars from Barclays and HSBC to finalize the purchase of Banamex.
Who owns Grupo México?
Germán Larrea, also known as the “king of copper” is a Mexican businessman who owns Grupo México, a conglomerate that has cargo transportation as Ferromex among its businesses.
Grupo México participates in the construction of the Mayan train and although it has clashed with the government over this construction, President López Obrador said that this was not a problem for the federal government but he did ask to review the amount of taxes that Citigroup would pay.
“There is (…) on the part of the Government of Mexico no disagreement, there is no problem on our part in carrying out this operation,” President López Obrador recently said.
