Skadden and Paul Weiss have scored leading roles in Citigroup’s sale of a 25% stake in Grupo Financiero Banamex to a company owned by Mexican billionaire Fernando Chico Pardo and members of his family for $2.3bn.
Skadden is acting as Citi’s US legal advisor on the deal, while Creel García-Cuéllar Aiza y Enríquez and White & Case are acting as the bank’s Mexican legal advisors.
Meanwhile, Paul Weiss is US counsel to Pardo and his family, with the team led by corporate partners Laura Turano and Stan Richards. Bufete Robles Miaja is serving as Mexican counsel.
The deal values Banamex, Mexico’s fourth-largest financial group by total assets, at $9.1bn according to Reuters. It is the last international consumer banking divestiture in the streamlining plan Citi announced in 2021, when the bank said it would divest from 13 markets across Europe, the Middle East and Asia as well as Mexico.
Skadden’s deal team is being led by New York M&A partners Paola Lozano and Jeffrey Brill, while White & Case’s effort is being led by capital markets partners Narciso Campos and Eduardo Flores alongside M&A partner Alberto Sepúlveda and debt finance partner Eugenio Bernal (all in Mexico City).
The two firms also counselled Citi last year when it when it separated Banamex from its institutional banking business in Mexico, with Lozano heading the effort at Skadden, and Campos and Flores fielding the White & Case team.
Citi said it would “retain and continue to grow” its institutional business in Mexico, stating: “Given the country’s world-class manufacturing industry and integration with global supply chains, Citi is confident about Mexico’s trajectory and is uniquely positioned to support cross-border capital markets activity and trade flows to and from Mexico.”
Citigroup had intended to take Banamex public, and said that any decisions related to the timing and structure of the proposed IPO would “continue to be guided by several factors, including market conditions and receipt of regulatory approvals”.
Pardo will become chair of Banamex after the sale, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.
Citi’s Banking group is acting as the exclusive financial advisor to Citi on the transaction.
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