BofA Seeks Buyer for Rassmuss Stake in Chile’s Top Iron Ore Firm

The Rassmuss CAP sale is the most significant restructuring of a Chilean industrial family holding in more than a decade — and the asset most exposed to Chile’s shifting iron-ore cycle is the one the market now has to price.

The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports that the Rassmuss family is selling its most emblematic industrial holdings in Chile, according to a report by Diario Financiero on April 23, 2026. The historic shareholder of the Invercap holding — parent of Chile’s largest steel and iron-ore group, CAP — has given Bank of America a mandate to find buyers for the family stake, days after Juan Enrique Rassmuss Raier stepped down from the CAP presidency. In parallel, the family’s mining arm Cemin has entered an extrajudicial reorganization process under which it has committed to an “ordered sale” of its main business units.

The Rassmuss CAP sale comes against a difficult mining cycle — Minera Pullalli reported losses of US$1.9 million in the first quarter of 2025 and US$4.9 million in losses in the corresponding period of the prior year, according to CMF filings. The Cemin agreement with creditor Santander includes staged payments and mortgages over the Domeyko and Batuko processing plants, with Inversiones Hierro Viejo SpA acting as guarantor and posting roughly 40% of Rassmuss’s Invercap shares as collateral. The process is being overseen by court-appointed veedor Enrique Ortiz D’Amico.

What CAP is and why the Rassmuss CAP sale matters

CAP is the holding company that owns Compañía Minera del Pacífico (CMP) — Chile’s largest iron-ore producer — plus the Huachipato steel mill and related industrial operations. Invercap controls roughly 31% of CAP and is itself co-controlled by two anchor families: Rassmuss, holding its position primarily through Cemin, and Andraca, historically the other pillar. The arrangement dated to a détente struck after the two families’ founders had fallen out, and was carried forward by the sons Juan Rassmuss Raier and Roberto de Andraca Adriasola.

The Rassmuss CAP sale would mark the end of that shared-control arrangement and potentially clear the way for the Andraca family, or a third party, to consolidate control of Invercap. Japan’s Mitsubishi has been a partner on the mining side through CMP since 2010, adding a further stakeholder to any recomposition of the control block. The investment plan announced for 2025 had called for US$275 million of investment concentrated in mining, including the restart of Mina Los Colorados — a project now caught in the middle of the reorganization process.

The Cemin creditor agreement and its asset calendar

The Cemin reorganization centres on an ordered sale of the group’s main mining assets under court supervision. The main assets earmarked for disposal are the Pullalli plant and mine (a subterranean gold mine and processing plant in La Ligua, Valparaíso region), the Mina Uva project, and the Mina El Seco project. The Domeyko and Batuko processing plants — operational assets producing copper cathodes via leach-pad operations — remain in operation but have been pledged as collateral under the agreement with Santander.

The creditor-overseen process sets a defined timeline for the asset sales and limits Cemin’s operational flexibility. Cemin‘s founder, Juan Rassmuss Echecopar, had built the group in the 1980s by acquiring copper, gold and silver operations across northern Chile. His son Juan Rassmuss Raier inherited the business in 2016 and brought in Juan Andrés Morel — formerly general manager of mine operations at BHP’s Escondida — to professionalise the operation, but the commodity-price cycle and rising financing costs eroded the strategy.

What investors should watch next

The Bank of America process around the Invercap stake will be watched for two questions: who the strategic buyers are, and at what valuation the Rassmuss position is struck. A transfer of control to the Andraca family would consolidate a single-family control structure at Invercap for the first time; a third-party buyer — domestic pension funds, a strategic international steelmaker, or Mitsubishi raising its stake — would reset the industrial-control architecture of one of Chile’s largest listed-industrial groups. Market observers point to the iron-ore cycle and copper-price trajectory as the macro variables determining the bid book.

The Rassmuss CAP sale also lands in the same week as President Kast’s 40-plus measure reform package filed in Congress on April 22, which would cut the Primera Categoría corporate tax rate from 27% to 23% over three years. That reform would directly affect the valuation calculus of any strategic bid for Invercap — and the broader Chile economy 2026 outlook points to copper and iron-ore as the twin catalysts for the IPSA-listed industrial complex into which a new Invercap buyer would be entering.

Related coverage: Chile Economy 2026 Outlook • Kast Files Chile Tax Reform • Chile Economy 2026: Kast and Copper