The process of sale of Banamex seems to have settled in favor of German Larreathe second richest man in our country, who presented an offer of almost 11 billion dollars to take over the Banco Nacional de México.
But according to columnist Darío Celis, the businessman received a “little help” from the Government of Mexico by making a request to the Daniel Becker group: get off the bench dispute.
The journalist pointed out that “a senior official” of the federal administration sent that message through a call to the group of the president of the Association of Banks of Mexico (ABM).
“They made him see that Citi he felt more comfortable with the proposal of the group of the mining tycoon Germán Larrea”, he assured in his column this Tuesday.
Celis assured that Becker and company made the decision to drop the bid for Banamex just last week.
Why did Citi ‘play ugly’ on Becker’s group’s offer?
The journalist added that to this was added the fact that Citi had two problems with Becker’s proposal.
“His offer was well below, and he failed to tie up more national investors,” said Celis.
He added that the Becker group’s proposal was for 7 thousand 500 million dollarswhich might even be improved to 8 billion dollars, something that in the end was not attractive to Citi.
The other ‘inconvenience’ of the bank with the offer was that most of the funds were foreign. In various press conferences, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador insisted that the government preferred that Banamex will return to Mexican hands.
Becker’s group had asked for the support of BlackRock funds from Larry Fink; Apollo’s Marc Rowan, and sovereign wealth funds Abu DhabiADIA, and SingaporeGIC.
“In the end, the foreign component of the offer was much more than 55 percent% that had been originally forecast, leaving out the possibility that more Mexican businessmen would get on it”, Cellis added.
