Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Citigroup has agreed to sell a 24 per cent stake in Banamex to several new investors, marking a new step towards a full divestiture of the Mexican retail bank.
Citi on Monday said it had agreed to sell $2.5bn worth of shares to investors including US private equity firm General Atlantic, Brazilian investment bank Banco BTG Pactual and funds managed by Blackstone, Liberty Strategic Capital and the Qatar Investment Authority.
“We are honoured to have the backing of these buyers as we prepare for Banamex’s proposed initial public offering,” said Ernesto Torres Cantú, head of International at Citi.
The sale represents the latest step towards ending its nearly 25-year ownership of Banamex. Citi last year sold a 25 per cent stake in the unit to Mexican financier Fernando Chico Pardo, who chairs its board of directors and is its largest individual private shareholder.
Citi has been working towards a public listing of its remaining stake in the Mexican unit as it exits retail banking outside of the US, a crucial strategy in chief executive Jane Fraser’s overhaul of the New York banking giant.
Citi is nearing the end of an ambitious restructuring, which is expected to have cut about 20,000 jobs by the end of this year. Last year, it agreed the sale of its Polish business to VeloBank as well as the sale of its Russian subsidiary to Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital.
Once the sales are finalised, Citi will have sold nearly half of Banamex. It said it does not anticipate any additional sales in 2026 to allow investors “time to drive value creation”.
The Wall Street bank said the sales would be subject to antitrust regulatory approval in Mexico and likely to be completed this year. Each investor was limited to a maximum purchase of 4.9 per cent of stock, it added. The sale implies a price that represents about 0.85 times local book value.
