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If you want to muscle in on Citigroup’s relationship with Mexican cement company, Cemex, you might as well forget about it.
Every time Cemex has needed an investment bank to help it, Citigroup has been at its side. As such, the Mexican group is a quintessential Citigroup client.
Citigroup managed the firm’s first Eurobond in 1989 — the first international bond for a Latin American private sector borrower since the 1982 debt crisis. In 1992, Citigroup provided Cemex with a bridge loan when it bought Spain’s two biggest cement businesses. In 2000, Citigroup acted as an adviser when Cemex became the first Latin American company to buy a US rival, Southdown. In 2004, Citigroup advised on Cemex’s $5.8 billion acquisition of UK rival RMC, and arranged the biggest loan ever for a Latin American company. Last year it acted as a bookrunner for Cemex’s $1.5 billion equity offering.
For Rodrigo Trevino, Cemex’s chief financial officer and formerly an 18-year veteran of Citigroup, it is easy to pinpoint why his firm keeps going back to the bank.