Banamex has a great history and an exceptional structure, so it is rare to see it in the fourth place of the largest financial groups in Mexico. Can you return to compete for the first places in the Pardo Chico era? This is the question.
Banamex is still huge, but is far from the number one he once occupied. It has 13.6 million customers in consumer banking and 8.6 million customers of the AFORE. It handles more than one billion pesos in assets and operates a network of 1,300 branches.
The entry into the scene of Fernando Chico Pardo has generated many expectations. He is a talented financial, who worked on Wall Street and was very close to Carlos Slim. It is the main shareholder of ASUR, a company with capitalization value close to 170,000 million pesos. Opera 16 airports, including that of Cancun, which is the largest private terminal in Mexico, and that of San Juan in Puerto Rico.
What plans does Pardo have for Banamex? The objective of an entrepreneur is not to have the largest company, but to obtain the maximum profitability for its investment. To keep 25% of the financial group, Chico Pardo is putting 42,000 million pesos on the table. This will reach control, because Citi will put his shares on sale. This will happen in 2026. The group chaired by Jane Fraser will not leave Mexico. In fact, it will compete directly with Banamex in the field of patrimonial and business banks. There are not millions of customers, but thousands, but very profitable.
The competition facing Banamex is brutal. In the upper part of the table, there are Spaniards BBVA and Santander. In the field of the symbolic, with Banorte the prestige of being the largest bank of Mexico will be played. In terms of digitalization, there are traditional banks in search of the Holy Grail, but there are also new players such as NU and Mercado Pago, who play the role of large disruptors, attractive to new generations and for groups that had not been served by traditional banking.
The transaction is good news for the government of Claudia Sheinbaum. It is not a thing of every day that an entrepreneur announce an investment of 2.3 billion dollars. It is a historical institution, with systemic importance that had been carrying the sign for sale for three years. It is good news for Mexico, because it implies that the government now had a more discreet intervention and a more pragmatic management than in the past six -year term. Amlo vetoed Germán Larrea, made public a series of conditions for the purchase and sale and, at a time of delirium, announced the intention of the government to buy the bank.
In the next few days, perhaps, we will have an idea of what the Government’s vision is about this operation. All probability, they will highlight that the buyer is a Mexican group and that this is part of a process that reverts the foreignization of the banking system that was promoted in the neoliberal period. Beyond the narrative, the most relevant is what a relaunched banamex can contribute to the Mexican economy. Chico Pardo has an enormous infrastructure experience and can be a protagonist in financing projects that the country needs. In any case, the question is in the air: What plans does it have and how long it will take to see the hand of this entrepreneur in the bank?
Ps. The 2.3 billion dollars that Pardo Chico will pay for a quarter of the group can be compared to the 12.5 billion that CITI paid in 2001, so it was the largest bank in Mexico. A quarter of a century later, the bank is worth less, but still has a very powerful brand.
Many things have changed in these three decades in the financial system, although sometimes it seems that everything remains almost the same.
