Banamex
 |
|
| Citibanamex | |
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Predecessor | Grupo Financiero Banamex Accival |
| Founded | June 2, 1884 as Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) |
| Headquarters | Mexico City, Mexico |
|
Key people
|
Manuel Medina-Mora Escalante (Chairman of the Board) Ernesto Torres Cantú (CEO) |
| Products | Banking, financial |
| Revenue |
 US$ 18.3 billion (2010) |
|
US$ 1.7 billion (2010) |
|
| Total assets |
US$ 58.4 billion (2011) |
|
Number of employees
|
41,390 (2012) |
| Parent | Citigroup |
| Website | www.banamex.com |
Grupo Financiero Banamex S.A. de C.V. has its origins and is the owner of the Banco Nacional de México or Citibanamex (formerly Banamex). It is Mexico's second largest bank behind BBVA Bancomer. The Banamex Financial Group was purchased by Citigroup in August 2001 for $12.5 billion USD. It continues to operate as a Citigroup subsidiary.
Banamex was formed on June 2, 1884 from the merger of two banks, Banco Nacional Mexicano and Banco Mercantil Mexicano, two banks that had operated since the beginning of 1882. The newly founded bank had branches in Mérida, Veracruz, Puebla, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, and opened a branch in Guadalajara.
The bank was reorganized in 1926, becoming a financing bank and establishing the first agency of a Latin American bank in New York.
Banamex gradually introduced several financial product innovations to the Mexican market including savings accounts (in 1929), personal credit lines (in 1958), credit cards (in 1968), and ATM banking (in 1972).
In 1981, the California Commerce Bank was acquired by Banamex.
In the midst of a severe economic crisis (1982), President José López Portillo announced a major devaluation of the peso and nationalized all private banks in Mexico. For the next nine years Banamex operated as a government owned national credit association.
In 1991, Banamex was reprivatized and it established Grupo Financiero Banamex–Accival with the investment bank Acciones y Valores de México (Accival).
For the next four years Banamex and the rest of the Mexican private banks presided over an unprecedented expansion of private credit in Mexico. This expansion occurred in an environment characterized by: i) the lack of a credit culture at the newly privatized banks, which had been bought at rich multiples by individuals and organizations without lending experience, and ii) lax oversight by regulatory authorities, which led in some instances to the occurrence of irregular transactions (such as related party transactions).
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Wikipedia