The firm bought three companies in Argentina this year (the bank Wilobank, an e-commerce firm called Empretienda and the firm of Buy Now Pay Later, Ceibo Créditos) and hopes to buy a fourth later.
In addition, Ualá is waiting for the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) to approve the acquisition of Mexican bank ABC Capital.
“These acquisitions created great opportunities, as well as duplicate positions and other operating inefficiencies. That’s why we made the difficult decision to divest 53 positions in the region,” Barbieri said on his Twitter account.
Only in 2022 Ualá bought three companies. And we are in the process of buying a fourth. With this hyper-growth we have a regional team of more than 1,550 professionals, working from 6 countries with 17 nationalities.
—Pierpaolo Barbieri (@pbarbieri)
December 2, 2022
Ualá assured that the dismissals were made with agreements “above what the law indicates” and they hope that despite what this implies for families, it will allow them to continue growing sustainably.
The firm told Expansión that
The cut also occurs after last October, the director of Ualá México, Luis Madrazo Lajous, ensured that the company would continue to grow without staff cuts.
“We are fortunate to have investors who believe in us and have supported us financially, and in an environment in which (interest) rates rose, our rivals’ funding fell, their ability to spend on acquisition advertising fell, he said then Lajous.
The Ualá layoffs join the list of what other financial unicorns such as Bitso and Konfío have done, as well as the layoffs of Kavak, Twitter, Meta, Netflix, Disney, Intel, salesfoce and Amazon.
