SINCE WHEN least a couple of years, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the television industry has been forced to start an accelerated and disruptive transformation process.
However, like many items, television suffered in particular from the onslaught of the pandemic. The main one, dramatic drops in sales due to the contraction in the advertising market.
Also, increases in the costs of content generation, the emergence and consolidation of competitors in digital media and changes in the attitude and habits of the audience.
To face this new reality, complex and full of challenges, all companies in the industry in Mexico had to adapt, reduce costs and innovate content.
This was the case of TV Azteca, which, faced with sales drops of up to 40%, began a financial restructuring a year ago with the aim of ensuring the continuity and future of its operations.
Like many other companies from various sectors during the pandemic, the company founded by Ricardo Salinas Pliego has had to face the ravages and multiple effects derived from that crisis.
In 2024, it will face a maturity of 400 million dollars of senior notes and has been negotiating a constructive exit with its bondholders for more than 12 months, without affecting the progress of the business.
The main bondholders are Fidelity Investments, Doubleline Capital, ST. James’s Place, Invesco, Schroders, Contrarian Capital Management and Cyrus Capital Partners.
These bondholders, who are represented by the law firms Creel, García-Cuéllar, Aiza and Enríquez; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Ducera Partners, have turned a deaf ear to the company’s situation.
The television station, whose operating helm is headed by Benjamín Salinas Sada, has proposed and sought a dialogue with these creditors in order to expose the difficult environment it is experiencing, since, regardless of certain gradual recovery processes, its challenges are far from being solved.
Today, unfortunately, there is a terrible disconnection and worrying lack of sensitivity on the part of some of those bondholders in the face of a circumstance that seeks to preserve TV Azteca’s ongoing business.
It seems that, motivated and guided exclusively by personal interest, the only thing that interests them is to withdraw their money and take it with them, far from seeing a healthy and competitive company with solid long-term prospects.
Despite this complex panorama, TV Azteca will continue on the disciplined and responsible path of maintaining a healthy financial profile for the benefit of its stakeholders, which includes, in addition to creditors, a significant number of clients, suppliers and collaborators.
AT 84 YEARS OLD In tow, Don Antonio del Valle Ruiz is embarking on what may be his last great undertaking in his long, successful and fruitful life in the business world: leading a group of Mexican businessmen and financiers to buy Banamex. An accountant graduated from the Banking and Commercial School, in 1972 he founded the Banco Hipotecario Metropolitano, which two years later, in 1974, gave way to Banco de Crédito y Servicios, better known as Bancrecer. In 1982, the nationalization of José López Portillo’s banking system put an end to his career as a banker, which he resumed in 1992 with the purchase of Banco Internacional, during Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s six-year term, which from 1995 became to Bithal. In 2002 Del Valle sold his partners, Eduardo Berrondo and Jorge Esteve, his stake in that very successful bank, which would pass to the control of the English HSBC in 2004. That same year he founded Bx+, where he has remained to this day, but not before give blows like the attempt, around 2015, to take control, with a group of friends and Mexican businessmen, of the Banco Popular de España. Del Valle Ruiz is the black horse of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom he has an excellent relationship, as well as with an endless number of company captains. He is summoning many of them to return to their origins at the so-called National Bank of Mexico. We pass it on at cost.
AS PART OF third infrastructure package that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is about to announce, point out Line 4 of Guadalajara. It is a light rail of about 10 billion pesos that will have a length of 20 kilometers that goes from that city to Tlajomulco. It will connect with the macrobus at the Fray Angélico station and with the Southern Metropolitan Circuit, at the Santa Fe station. The Jalisco government headed by Enrique Alfaro estimates that it will mobilize between 130,000 and 200,000 people daily. The tender will be coordinated by the Infrastructure Secretariat led by Jorge Arganis and the resources will come from the Treasury Secretariat, led by Rogelio Ramírez de la O. There are two groups already emerging: Mota-Engil, chaired by José Miguel Bejos, and Grupo Mexico, by German Larrea. The latter owns the right of way where this passenger train will circulate. It belongs to Ferromex, directed by his nephew Fernando López-Guerra Larrea.
THE PROCESS OF Credito Real’s financial restructuring is being organized at a fast pace. I was telling you on Monday that the multiple-purpose financial company, headed by Angel Romanos, met last week with the creditor banks in order to map out a critical path. There is every intention to do it neatly. The banks have already formed a committee, which is led by BBVA managed by Eduardo Osuna, Banorte led by Carlos Hank González, Scotiabank led by Adrián Orero and Invex led by Juan Guichard. They have already signed Rothschild as a financial adviser, who operate in tandem with Daniel Nicolaievsky and Victor Leclercq. On the legal side, the banks hired Creel, García-Cuéllar, Aiza and Enríquez, who are led by Carlos Aiza. Crédito Real, directed by Carlos Ochoa, needs to restructure more than 54 billion pesos.
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