Slim’s Inbursa no longer seeks to buy Citi’s Banamex

MEXICO CITY: Billionaire Carlos Slim’s bank Grupo Financiero Inbursa SA is no longer vying to buy Citigroup Inc’s Mexican retail banking arm Banamex, leaving only two known contenders for the acquisition.

“Following submission of a non-binding proposal for the businesses in question, the parties mutually agreed that Inbursa will not be continuing to the next stages of the process,” Inbursa said in a filing with the Mexican stock exchange.

Slim, Mexico’s richest man, had been tagged as one of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s preferred local investors to take over Banamex, which has a long history as a top bank in Mexico and was acquired by Citigroup in 2001. But market watchers had seen Slim as a long shot to pay top dollar,