Banamex and Citi split this weekend. The American financial consortium will issue an announcement this Monday morning, which will make the division of both institutions official, they confirmed to The Day sources close to the operation.
The separation of both institutions is part of the sale of the Mexican bank by Citigroup, owner of Banamex since 2001. This operation was announced on January 11, 2022 as part of a global strategy undertaken by the American firm led by Jane Fraser.
This movement between Citi and Banamex implies that the high-value accounts (around 2 million) will remain in the hands of the transnational financial consortium, while the other 22 million will remain in the financial institution of Mexican origin.
For the 22 million customers who have a credit card, a payroll loan, personal loan, automobile loan, mortgage loan, savings accounts, insurance, and a retirement account, the separation will have no effect; In fact, they won’t even notice, he told The Day in April Manuel Romo, general director of Citibanamex.
Banamex customers should avoid falling into any fraud related to said advertisement. No representative of the institution will speak to request confidential information or demand any payment related to the separation.
The bank, according to its director, made sure that users of credit cards, loans or those who save don’t feel
the separation; Hence the importance of not sharing private information through calls, messages, emails or any other means.
Banamex clients must continue with their traditional payment schemes, while assets (higher value accounts) were notified of the movement months ago and will transfer their operations to Citi, an entity that already has an independent license in Mexico since September 2023.
The next step in the sale of Banamex is the initial public offering (IPO) that will be made on the stock market in 2025.
The sales process
At the beginning of 2022, Fraser announced that Citi would divest Banamex’s consumer business, that is, loans for individuals and companies, savings products, the insurance company and the retirement fund manager (Afore), while Citi He would keep the accounts with the highest value, the so-called patrimonial accounts.
At that time, Citibanamex’s assets were valued at 44 billion dollars or about 890 billion pesos, which includes branches, historic buildings, the resources of the Afore and the insurance company, as well as one of the most important cultural collections. of the country.
Once the sale of the Mexican financial institution was announced, one of the most important and representative in the country and which began operations 140 years ago, two possibilities were considered: going into the national or foreign stock market, or carrying out a transaction between individuals.
The strongest names to carry out a transaction were those of Carlos Slim, owner of Grupo Financiero Inbursa and the richest man in the country; Germán Larrea, the second wealthiest man in Mexico; Banorte Financial Group, headed by Carlos Hank; a series of Monterrey investors, and Daniel Becker, president of Grupo Financiero Mifel, along with a series of international investors.
In April 2022, Citibanamex opened the so-called data room
a document that exposed all the relevant data of the bank to those interested. Inbursa and Banorte were the first to announce their exit from the race to buy the Mexican division.
One of the versions of the reason why both firms decided not to go ahead with the purchase process was because of a high price set by the American consortium. Bank of America estimated the cost of Banamex at up to $15 billion.
By May 2023, everything seemed to indicate that Germán Larrea would be the one who would stay with Banamex; However, on May 23, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he was analyzing the possibility of the federal administration purchasing the majority of the bank’s shares.
At that time Larrea left the play and Citigroup announced that the sale of Banamex would be done through an IPO in the stock market, without giving details about whether it would do so in the Mexican stock market or abroad.
At the end of the third quarter, Citibanamex had assets of one billion 520 thousand 33 million pesos, which places it in fourth place nationally according to this indicator.