Grupo México, the mining-to-infrastructure conglomerate controlled by Germán Larrea, has offered to buy Banamex from Citi and says it can do it without loading up on new debt.
The company told Mexico’s stock exchange that even a 100% purchase would need less than $2 billion in additional credit—lines it says are already arranged.
It reported roughly $375 million in net debt at the end of the second quarter of 2025, or about 0.1 times EBITDA, and insists its mining, transport, and infrastructure investment plans will proceed either way.
The proposed structure is simple: Grupo México would keep 60% of the bank and place the remaining 40% with Mexican investors, including pension funds.
Agreements for that slice are already in hand, with the option of a later public offering to broaden ownership. Citi has 10 days to weigh the bid with its board and shareholders.
What’s behind the headlines is a contest over how Banamex changes hands. Citi had been working on a partial-sale and IPO route. Grupo México’s counter is a faster, domestically anchored takeover that promises financing certainty and a path to wide Mexican ownership.
Markets balked at first—shares in Grupo México sank after the bid—on fears of execution risk and potential leverage. The company’s swift message back: no bidding war, limited new borrowing, and no detour from its core projects.
Why this matters beyond Mexico: Banamex is a top-tier retail bank with millions of customers. Whoever owns it will shape pricing, digital investment, and branch strategy in a market of 130 million people that many global companies sell into.
For investors, the deal tests whether a diversified industrial group can absorb a large bank without weakening its balance sheet.
For policymakers and competitors, any approval will come with scrutiny from banking and antitrust regulators, because this alters the structure of everyday finance—savings accounts, small-business lending, and payments—for years to come.
The bottom line: This is a bid to keep a strategic bank under majority Mexican control while promising financial discipline.
If Citi accepts and regulators sign off, the result will signal how big, complex assets change hands in Latin America’s second-largest economy—and how quickly domestic capital can mobilize to make it happen.
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