MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Slim downplays meaning of YPF shares deal: “it was the exercise of a financial guarantee”

Nevertheless Carlos Slim Domit said that YPF is a good long-term investment

Carlos Slim Domit, son of tycoon Carlos Slim who recently acquired 8.4% of the shares of YPF oil company, confirmed on Monday that their arrival “was not a share purchase but the exercise of a financial guarantee,” which they have been working on in the last four years.

The heir of the world’s richest man (according to Forbes Magazine) stated that “our presence in YPF is not as it was presented in Argentina.”

The Argentine administration confirmed the information on Friday as a strategic purchase made by Slim and President Cristina Fernández considered it as “good news.”
“It was not a purchase, but we exercised the guarantees which were held by the banks, after Grupo Petersen (which belongs to the Eskenazi family) failed to pay a loan given to them in order to enter into YPF” he explained.

Last week it was announced that one of Slim’s companies bought 8.4% of YPF shares, according to the information provided by the oil company, 51% of whose shares was seized by the Argentine state from the Spanish company Repsol last April.

The Mexican businessman stated it is “a long-term investment in one of the most relevant companies of the hydrocarbon sector in Latin America” and he pointed out that the company has a “big potential.” The price tag was 343.9 million dollars.

“In Argentina it was shown as a purchase within the new structure of the company, but we have been working on this for four years,” said Slim Domit.