2023-12-24 04:10:40
July 1996. Roque Maccarone was worried. He had received the most complex and controversial order. And on behalf of him he always admired Carlos Menem. The president told him that he should advance an idea that he had always denied would happen, but that would now become a reality: privatize the Banco Nación that he presided over. Maccarone, as president of the entity, had to open the bank to auditors who would secretly come to delve into its numbers; and, finally, set a price that would be the sale price. The order included the most absolute discretion, since the strategy had to repeat the transformation into a public limited company through Decree 2778/90, a movement that surprised the market and later turned out to be the tip of the iceberg of the credibility that Menem managed to achieve in the markets. However, history was not repeated with Banco Nación. 96 was not 90, and support for Menemism was no longer the same as at the beginning of his administration. At least to advance complex privatizations such as those of Banco Nación.
Maccarone finally could not even advance the order that the president had given him, the intention of privatization was leaked, Menem had to deny the idea so as not to end up complicating the internal political front and finally the project was forgotten for an exclusive reason: everything It had to come out by law of Congress. And Menem could not guarantee majorities.
January 2001. Fernando de la Rúa maintained a difficult political agreement within an Alliance that was already in the process of being demolished, and that would finally lead to its fall 11 months later. His Minister of Economy, José Luis Machinea, told him in December 1999 that in order to maintain the standby with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he had to convert Banco Nación into a public limited company with majority shares held by the State and open the share package to public listing on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. And once this process was finished, he had to start a privatization schedule, which he had to complete a year later. And that the plan had to include a law of Congress to give it sustainability. De la Rúa asked his minister’s opinion, and Machinea was sincere: he did not believe that radicalism accompanied such a proposal nor that it could be politically sustainable over time. He did not say it directly, but the minister considered that neither De la Rúa nor his government would be able to sustain over time a social conflict in which the privatization of the Nation would be a bulwark for an eventual popular revolt. The project never reached Congress.
The IMF, in those times of Anne Krueger, ruled internally that the Argentina case was lost (it would officially withdraw its support in November 2001), Machinea resigned from the Ministry of Economy in March, a failed mini-management by Ricardo López Murphy would come, Domingo Cavallo would take over, who tried to come back with the idea of privatizing Banco Nación in combination with the AFIP and the country would end up in flames at the end of that year.
December 2023. Javier Milei presented his already famous DNU 70/2023 on his first national channel, in which in some 80 pages printed in A4 and in some 366 articles, the Executive proposes not only an economic plan or a government program . It’s something more. A cultural change in the commercial, financial and fiscal life of Argentina. One of those chapters, Title III, which explains the ideas of State reform where progress is made in the creation of “stock companies with majority state participation”, which become subject to the General Companies Law 19,550 and Consequently, they could be privatized. The process of reconversion into public limited companies may not take more than 180 days after the DNU is published (unless judicial suspensions or Congress annuls it), and after that period, the privatization process of these entities could begin. None of the companies are mentioned in the text of the DNU, and Milei only made reference to Aerolíneas Argentinas.
The consultation at the heart of the world Milei responds, however, that the interpretation of the decree must be taken broadly, including Banco Nación. The “senior sources” go further and affirm that the largest financial entity in the country is one of the main companies that are being targeted for privatization for a somewhat obvious reason.
It is with YPF, almost the only one of the companies today owned by the State that can be considered “grandmother’s jewel”, the leitmotif of the Menemist years when EnTel, Segba, Obras Sanitarias, Aerolíneas Argentinas and, later, YPF were sold. , among other public companies.
The financial entity, unlike other complex projects such as the eventual privatizations of Channel 7, Télam, Radio Nacional, Aysa or similar, is the main actor in its market. Banco Nación is the undisputed leader of the Argentine financial system. It has 739 branches throughout the country, 16 electronic branches and two branches without their own accounting, 34 promotion positions, an administrative office, three mobile branches and its headquarters. It has four branches abroad (New York, Madrid, Montevideo and Santa Cruz de la Sierra), three agencies (Miami, San Pablo and Asunción), three sub-agencies in Paraguay (Concepción, Encarnación and Villarrica), a customer service center in Paraguay (Villa Morra) and a representative office in China (Beijing). It practically monopolizes foreign trade operations. It maintains some 2,793 ATMs operational. It is estimated that it has about seven million active clients, it is after YPF the main company in the country in billing; It doubles in operations its immediate private follower (Santander) and doubles in assets Banco Provincia, the second entity in the ranking.
Today no one dares to give a figure of the estimated value on which a sale operation of the Nation can be ventured, but some other interested consultant speaks of no less than 4 billion dollars, a figure that could increase in a more expansive country. with a growing financial system. It is said that Milei did not throw the issue into the debate out of whim or ideology. The President knows that there are potential candidates interested in the operation. Even the occasional Argentine businessman, who has his activity on the frontier of the financial system. And that he is permanently rejected by traditional banks and bankers. A track? He was one of the first to congratulate the appearance of the DNU.
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