Mexican non-bank lender Unifin entered 2022 facing an existential crisis. After a period of aggressive growth, rising funding costs and regulatory pressure, the company — one of the country’s largest providers of financing to small and medium-sized enterprises — was burdened with roughly $4 billion in liabilities, locked out of capital markets and operating in a sector already destabilized by a series of failures. A liquidation would have destroyed value and removed a key source of SME credit from the Mexican economy. What followed instead was the largest corporate restructuring by liabilities ever completed in Mexico — and one that returned Unifin to life as a going concern.
Wrapped up in January 2025, the restructuring allowed Unifin to emerge from concurso mercantil with a simplified capital structure, aligned stakeholders and renewed access to funding. By scale, complexity, execution risk and outcome, the $4 billion restructuring sets a new benchmark — and earns Unifin the Corporate Restructuring of the Year award.
From the outset, the objective was not merely to reshuffle claims but to preserve the operating platform. Antonio Pérez Sales, a partner at AlixPartners who joined the process early and now helps run the company, recalls that the first priority was continuity.
“Each creditor community has different interests,” Pérez says. “Aligning everything into a solution that worked for everyone within the boundaries of the process was a key challenge.” That alignment required navigating a fragmented creditor base spanning Mexican banks, international funds, secured facilities, unsecured bonds, perpetual notes and obligations in both pesos and dollars, at a moment when investor confidence in the sector had largely evaporated and comparable restructurings had ended in wind-downs.
The solution paired a comprehensive balance-sheet overhaul with deep operational restructuring. Secured creditors agreed to receive collateral through trust structures from which they will be repaid over time, while Mexican development banks accepted new long-term take-back secured instruments with amortizations of up to 15 years. Unsecured creditors absorbed losses but received between 75% and 80% of the restructured company’s equity, with existing shareholders diluted to 15%. A management incentive plan of up to 5% of pro forma equity was designed to align incentives going forward.
A central feature was the creation of a robust trust mechanism backed by nearly all unencumbered assets, giving unsecured creditors both majority ownership and asset-based protection. As Pérez notes, the structure provides “a second source of recovery” through equity value creation as Unifin rebuilds its franchise — a rare outcome for unsecured creditors in Mexican financial restructurings and one that materially altered recovery expectations.
Operational changes were equally stark. To stabilize cash flows, Unifin cut costs by roughly 70%, including a dramatic reduction in headcount. “We had 900 employees and now we have 250,” says José Ramón Díaz Arnau, Unifin’s chief commercial officer. “It was very challenging to keep employees motivated and believing in the project.” The company refocused on core leasing and SME financing while tightening underwriting standards across a risk-sensitive portfolio.
Liquidity during the process came from the sale of a non-core oil rig repossessed from a Pemex supplier, generating about $55 million. The divestment proved critical in funding the restructuring and maintaining operations when market appetite for non-bank financial exposure had evaporated and interim financing options were limited.
The final piece was exit financing. In a rare precedent for a Mexican corporate restructuring — and an unprecedented one for the non-bank financial sector — development banks provided roughly $230 million to $250 million equivalent in peso-denominated funding with an eight-year maturity, priced at TIIE plus about 160 basis points. The financing restored origination capacity, met stringent precedent conditions and signaled public-sector support for the SME credit market at a delicate moment.
Unifin Restructuring and Exit Financing
Financial Advisors: AlixPartners LLC; Blink Capital; Houlihan Lokey; Jefferies; Rothschild & Co
Legal Advisors: Cleary Gottlieb; Sainz Abogados; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
