Eugenio Baeza talks about growing a brokerage firm from 30 million to 100 million pesos, the Mexican stock market collapse in 1995-1996, and what it took to take a company public during the crisis.
September 1996.
Approximately $30 million in sales.
About $3 million ("$3 million at most" as stated).
And on the part of the brokerage firms, which at that time were real brokerage firms, that is, they did perform the function of brokerage firms. Now within the banks, this and the forms that exist today, well, it's quite different. But at that time, a deal was made with NA Finza and with the brokerage firms to create an intermediate market that I find fabulous and sad what we have today in terms of the stock market in Mexico. It's truly sad. Sad to say the least. So we go to the intermediate market, we do all the work for Norte. He offers to take us to the market. We were already with all the intermediate stock exchange. And Oscar Sepulveda, who was my advisor, says, and hey, you know what? This guy I know very well, well, he's my cousin Raymundo Leal, who is the partner of gbm, right? Alonso Deguera and Jorge Rojas. Why don't we talk to them? So, well, we talked to gbm. GBM said, no, no, no, let's go to the big market. Okay, here we go, right? Everything is ready to go public. The company is growing very well. We were already paying bonuses in December and the aforementioned December mistake, right? And we owed everything in dollars. So 95 was a very complicated year. Terrible, terrible. Because it's really hard to live with austerity, right? You can't do anything in just productivity, productivity, productivity, productivity. And well, remember that all of us who were working there earned less than half of what we used to earn. If it devalued 120% and if we earned in pesos, your salary was like this, inflation was like this, right? So it was very hard. 95 comes, we came from total austerity. 96 begins, we started to ease off, to grow. And in September, 96, GBM takes us public. Hey, that process was super exciting because I'm telling you, there were analysts there. And imagine if we were a company with $30 million in sales and $3 million at most from Evid, and we were doing the road show here at the Morales ranch with 250 analysts, and then in Monterrey and then in Guadalajara and then in New York and then in Chicago and then in Chihuahua. Well, it was like we were going to place at least 1 billion right now, right? So this, we do this whole process.
