The financial crisis that Unifin is going through affects the main development banks of the Mexican government: Nacional Financiera (Nafin) and Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior (Bancomext), which are among the company’s main lenders both in Mexican pesos and in pesos. Dollars.
The lessor has revolving liabilities of 5,016 million pesos with the entities directed by Luis Antonio Ramírez Pineda, according to information from its latest quarterly report. The other financial companies to which Unifin owes the most are Banamex with 2,403 million and the Latin American Bank for Foreign Trade (Bladex) with 2,014 million.
What about Bancomext and Nafin?
Unifin, which on Monday announced the non-payment of its debts and a restructuring, owes Nafin 3,573 million pesos in credit lines in dollars and in pesos in total.
Bancomext owes 1,443 million pesos. The data is relevant because it is development banking, whose role is to fund profitable projects for society.
“The traditional role of development banking is to fund projects whose social profitability justifies them, but whose private profitability is not high enough, or immediate, to make them attractive to commercial intermediaries,” according to the Bank of Mexico (Banxico). .
Nafin is Unifin’s largest creditor while Bancomext is the fourth largest creditor.
Ramírez Pineda assumed the direction of both entities last January and promised to “redouble efforts to provide more credits to a greater number of companies, especially micro, small and medium-sized businesses located in less favored areas,” refers the page Government of Mexico website.
When asked by Expansión, Nafin said they had no information on any precautionary or criminal measure against Unifin. “Due to banking secrecy, we cannot disclose this type of information,” argued a spokesperson for the firm. Bancomext did not respond to the request for information at press time.
The Unifin crisis
Unifin announced that it will stop paying interest and capital on its debt from this date and until the period necessary to negotiate definitive agreements with its creditors, in addition to starting a restructuring of its business.
Unifin’s main lines of business are operating leasing, factoring, auto loans, working capital loans, structured loans and insurance.
The firm highlighted that it hired Rothschild & Co., AlixPartners, Sainz Abogados and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP as advisors to analyze and develop solutions in the restructuring process.
Unifin joins Alpha Holding and Credito Real in a financial meltdown that nearly wiped out a total of $5 billion in bonds. All kinds of conflicts put companies and their bondholders in trouble: both Alpha and Crédito Real scared investors by revealing their accounting problems. But in the end, the collapse was accelerated by a surge in interest rates in Mexico and the United States, further insulating companies from the easy money they depended on.
“Part of the restructuring process includes an analysis of the company’s operating situation and a cut in important operating expenses is being implemented depending on their sensitivity in the company’s operation,” a company spokesperson told Expansión.
