Televisa 联手 Fintech 以 20 亿美元收购 AT&T 墨西哥，组建四核电信合资公司对抗 América Móvil

Grupo Televisa SAB and Fintech Holdings Inc. have agreed to buy AT&T Mexico in a $2 billion deal to rival billionaire Carlos Slim’s mobile phone empire.

The joint venture will be equally owned by Televisa and Fintech, according to a statement on Tuesday. Televisa is led by co-Chief Executive Officers Bernardo Gómez and Alfonso De Angoitia, while Fintech Holdings is headed by billionaire David Martinez.

Dallas-based AT&T Inc. decided to sell its Mexico business last year after struggling for more than a decade to gain ground on Slim’s dominant carrier, América Móvil SAB. The move will make Televisa the first provider in Mexico to offer mobile service, internet, pay TV and landline phone.

The Mexican mobile market is dominated by Telcel, part of the América Móvil group. AT&T Mexico is the second-largest mobile operator in the country, according to the company, accounting for 16% share of the market with about 24.7 million wireless subscribers as of Dec. 31, 2025. America Movil has a 58% market share. AT&T Mexico earned 1.4 billion pesos ($76 million) on sales of 85.4 billion pesos last year, according to the statement.

The deal is expected to close early next year contingent on regulatory approval, Televisa said in the statement. The group will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand and secured debt financing.

This is the second deal for the Gomez, De Angoitia and Martinez trio this year, after agreeing in February to buy a stake in Mexican retail bank Banamex.

AT&T expanded in Mexico in 2014 when it announced the purchase of Iusacell, and later expanded with Nextel Mexico’s assets for a total of $4.4 billion. The US telecom provider was lured by the reforms of then-president Enrique Pena Nieto, who created an independent regulatory body called the Federal Telecommunications Institute to crack down on monopolistic behavior. The IFT instituted rules to force Slim’s telecom group to share infrastructure with competitors and let rivals connect to his network for free.

But Mexico scaled back much of the reforms under former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and current leader Claudia Sheinbaum. This year, Mexico scrapped the IFT and replaced the independent regulator with agencies that operate within the government.

Despite more than $10 billion of investment in the country, AT&T’s share of Mexico’s mobile market never caught up with Telcel and the company has also clashed publicly with Slim. In 2022, America Movil accused AT&T of coming between the media giant and its long-sought television license in a feud that escalated to name-calling. Last year, AT&T also agreed to sell its stake in paid TV business Sky Mexico to Televisa.

AT&T isn’t the only telecommunications group that’s looking to exit Mexico. Earlier this year, Spain’s Telefonica SA sold its Mexican unit, Telefonica Hispanoamerica SA, to Melisa Acquisition LLC in a deal worth $450 million.