LatAm List – Goldman Sachs made its biggest Mexican loan to date with a $125M credit for e-commerce leader, MercadoLibre. MercadoLibre will use the capital to triple its $100M working-capital portfolio for SMEs in Mexico.
Mercado Credito, MercadoLibre’s lending arm, was launched in 2016 to provide credit to clients and customers who used MercadoPago in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. To date, MercadoLibre has disbursed over $610M in working-capital credit to 270,000 companies across the region, as well as $200M in consumer loans.
From YahooNews:
“We wanted not only Goldman’s capital but also the experience the bank has on this type of transactions throughout Latin American,” said Martin de los Santos, a senior vice president for MercadoLibre. “I hope to work with the bank in the future to finance other portfolios, including consumer operations in Mexico and other markets.”
The loan will be used exclusively to fund MercadoCredito’s Mexico operations, which until this deal was completely financed by MercadoLibre’s operations. MercadoCredito Brazil is financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, while the Argentina operations are still self-funded.
With 25% of e-commerce marketshare for the region, MercadoLibre is well-placed to provide funding to suppliers who have traditionally lacked credit. Goldman Sachs has also previous lent capital to Mexico’s Konfio and Credijusto.
Read more in YahooNews.
