The Federal Chamber of La Plata halts the decree transforming Banco Nación into a public limited company.

In a new judicial setback for the national government, the Federal Court of La Plata confirmed the suspension of Decree 116/2025 , which established the transformation of the Banco de la Nación Argentina into a public limited company.

The Third Chamber of the Federal Court of Appeals in La Plata, composed of Judges Carlos Vallefín and Roberto Lemos Arias, upheld the first-instance ruling by Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla. In March, the judge had issued a precautionary measure suspending the decree for six months . The national government appealed the measure, which was now upheld by the appellate court.

According to the ruling, to which Clarín had access, "the privatization of the Banco de la Nación Argentina was excluded from the original bill—submitted by the Executive Branch—which culminated in the passage of Law 27,742 on the Bases and Starting Points for the Liberty of Argentines." Therefore, the Chamber concluded that: "The delegation invoked by the Executive Branch to resolve the transformation into a corporation cannot be applied to an entity whose nature Congress did not authorize it to change."

The action had been promoted by workers of Banco Nación with the support of the Banking Association, headed by national deputy Sergio Palazzo , as amicus curiae .

This Tuesday, Palazzo also obtained a postponement from the Bicameral Commission on Legislative Procedures for the consideration of Decree 116/25 . "There are substantive issues that the La Plata Chamber is resolving, and I request a postponement to conduct a more thorough analysis of the reasons the judge established in the injunction," said the Union for the Homeland representative. Palazzo's argument is based on a note submitted to Congress by the plaintiffs' attorneys in the Ramos Padilla case.

The privatization of Banco Nación has been on the government's agenda from the beginning: it was on the list of companies in the original draft of the Basic Law, but was later excluded by Congress. From that moment on, the intention of the team led by Daniel Tillard, president of BNA, was to move forward with the transformation of the bank—the largest in the country—into a public limited company, mirroring what is happening with Banco do Brasil.

In February, the national government decreed the transformation of the "Banco de la Nación Argentina into a public limited company" with the argument that this "will contribute to modernizing its legal and operational structure, allowing for greater flexibility in its management and adaptation to financial market best practices, incorporating more agile and efficient governance mechanisms, and a more professional administration aligned with international standards of transparency, efficiency, and oversight."

In turn, "the transformation will allow for the optimization of resource allocation, strengthening its market position, and enhancing its financing capacity, for the benefit of its clients and economic development in general," states Decree 116/25, which establishes that BNA SA's shareholders will be the National State (with a 99.9% stake) and the Banco de la Nación Argentina Foundation (0.1%).