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Vikram Pandit happiest man in US: Government now Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim came to Citigroup

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:November 26, 2008

The investment firm owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has purchased a 1% stake in Citigroup Inc., the financial giant recently rescued by the U.S. government, an analyst close to the transaction said Tuesday.

The stake — amounting to around 26 million shares, worth around $150 million — is “a portfolio investment of Grupo Financiero Inbursa,” the analyst said, requesting anonymity.

The U.S. government’s more than $300-billion rescue of Citigroup late Sunday sparked a frenzy on the markets, with Wall Street and European stock markets soaring as investors cheered the news.

The deal leaves Washington with the burden of the bank’s potential losses of up to $306 billion and responsibility to inject capital of $20 billion , which follows a previous $25-billion infusion.

U.S.-based Citi operates in more than 100 countries and, with more than $2 trillion in assets, widely is viewed as too big to be allowed to fail.

Slim, a Mexican businessman largely focused on the telecommunications industry, was ranked the second richest person in the world by Forbes magazine in 2008, with a fortune estimated at more than $50 billion. Grupo Financiero Inbursa SA’s brokerage unit purchased the Citigroup stake in a series of trades from Nov. 19 through today, according to exchange records, which don’t specify whether the transactions were on behalf of clients or for the bank’s account.

An Inbursa spokesman said the firm had no comment on the trades. The 26 million shares amount to less than 1 percent of the Citigroup’s stock.

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