MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's fifth-largest bank, Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB, said Monday that Chief ExecutiveLuis Pena has resigned, after leading the company for just over four years.
In a filing with the Mexican Stock Exchange, Banorte said its board has accepted Pena's resignation, effective immediately, and namedAlejandro Valenzuela, director of treasury and stock brokerage operations, as interim chief executive.
Banorte officials declined to comment on Pena's departure.
Pablo Ruiz, an analyst at Vector brokerage who has a buy rating and year-end price target of 63 pesos ($6.01) on the bank's shares, said Pena's resignation is a short-term negative for the stock.
"Luis did a very good job," Ruiz said. "Now they have to find a new CEO of his caliber.... He was an asset to the company."
Pena, who joined Banorte as its chief executive in February 2004, oversaw the bank's expansion from a regional lender with a strong presence in northern Mexico to a top-tier player with a nationwide footprint.
During his time at the helm, Banorte grew from MXN176.22 billion in assets at the close of 2004 to MXN287.93 billion last December.
Pena also led the company's expansion in the U.S., where in the last 18 months it acquired 70% of Texas-based bank INB Financial Corp. and remittance company Uniteller.
Monterrey-based Banorte, the last big Mexican bank still controlled by local investors, reported a net profit of MXN6.81 billion last year.
Deutsche Bank analyst Mario Pierry said in a note he's maintaining his buy rating and price target of MXN62 on Banorte's shares.
"While Mr. Pena will be missed, we believe that Banorte's strong turnaround reflected the quality of the entire management team," Pierry said. "Furthermore, management recently confirmed that operating trends remain strong and reiterated their 2008 core net income guidance of MXN7.8 billion to MXN8.0 billion."
Nearly all of Mexico's leading banks were acquired earlier in the decade by foreign investors, like Citigroup Inc. (C), Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizacaya Argentaria SA (BBV) and Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), which were eager to cash in on the country's proximity to the U.S. and new found economic stability.
Ruiz didn't think Pena's departure signals an imminent change of ownership at the bank, which has long been rumored to be an attractive takeover target for a foreign bank.
Despite four years of double-digit loan growth, the use of financial services in Mexico still lags that of its peers in the developing world, which bodes well for the banking industry's growth prospects.
Bank loans as a percentage of gross domestic product, a common measure of the penetration of financial services in a country, are still in the mid-teens, compared with an average of 25% for the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, according to the Association of Mexican Banks.
Banorte's O shares, which are up 4% year to date, fell 1.8% to close Monday at MXN46.90.
