Mexico Sells €2.50 Billion in Euro Bonds Due 2024 and 2045

Anthony Harrup, Wall Street Journal, 2/26/2015

MEXICO CITY—The Mexican government sold €2.5 billion in nine-year and 30-year bonds Thursday, securing record low yields for the maturities and completing most of its international capital markets financing needs for 2015, a Finance Ministry official said Thursday.

Alejandro Díaz de León, head of public credit at the ministry, said demand for the bonds was 3.5 times the amount sold, with around 400 investors placing more than 600 orders.

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Black Gold Next Frontier for Top Billionaires: Corporate Mexico

02/26/15 Bloomberg 

Mexico’s top three billionaires — Carlos Slim, Alberto Bailleres, and German Larrea — dominate the country’s telecommunications, mining and retail industries. Next up on their priority list: oil. Slim, Bailleres and Larrea, Mexico’s three richest men according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, have created branches within their holding companies to compete in the oil and natural gas industries as the country’s government-run energy monopolies end. Bailleres’s Grupo Bal, which oversees mining companies Fresnillo Plc and Industrias Penoles SAB, formed PetroBal to explore for crude in Mexico two weeks ago.

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Mexico president in crisis is losing support of big business

02/26/15 The Washington Post 

Bernardo Montoya/Reuters

The full-page ad in Mexico’s national newspapers was unusual, if not unprecedented: 20 powerful business groups and think tanks publicly scolding the government for not doing its job. They demanded “conditions necessary to do their work … in total security, in all of the country.” The ad, published last month, called on President Enrique Pena Nieto to “honor your oath to observe and enforce the constitution.” The public criticism by Mexico’s business community underlines the eroding support for Pena Nieto’s administration as he enters the third year of a six-year term. Business leaders are angry over reforms that have increased the tax burden without sparking economic growth, scandals over apparent favoritism and acts of lawlessness that are hurting commerce.

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Mexico’s Foreign Direct Investment Falls in 2014

Anthony Harrup, 2/24/2015

Mexico received $22.6 billion in foreign direct investment last year, including $5.6 billion in the fourth quarter, far short of the record investment received in 2013, according to preliminary numbers reported by the Economy Ministry on Tuesday .

Foreign direct investment was lower than the $42.1 billion reported for 2013, when the amount was boosted by $13.2 billion with Anheuser-Busch InBev’s buyout of the half of brewer Grupo Modelo that it didn’t already own.

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Brazil to Seek Lower Auto Quota with Mexico to Shield Industry – Sources

By Alonso Soto, 2/19/2015

Brazil will seek to reduce the dollar amount of vehicles that Mexico sells duty-free to the South American nation, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, raising tensions in upcoming trade negotiations between Latin America’s largest economies.

Mexican and Brazilian officials will start talks on Friday over an automotive treaty due to expire on March 19. Mexico is pushing to upon up trade as its auto industry booms, while Brazil wants to renew a quota on light vehicles that protects its struggling factories.

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Coca-Cola Caught up in Southern Mexico Protest, 10 Injured

By Mark Stevenson and E. Eduardo Castillo, 2/19/2015

Protests in the southern state of Guerrero around the disappearance of 43 students have meant regular blockades and attacks and robberies of vehicles delivering everything from milk to snacks in recent months.

But the conflict reached a new level late Wednesday when protesters temporarily detained employees of Coca-Cola Co., igniting anger in a business sector already frustrated by struggles to operate in the social turmoil.

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Central Bank Cuts Mexican Growth Forecasts

02/18/15 Wall Street Journal 

The Bank of Mexico on Wednesday lowered its forecast for economic growth for the nation this year, citing weaker expected global growth and risks of increased international market volatility and further declines in oil prices. In its quarterly inflation report, the central bank said it expects gross domestic product to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% this year, less than its previous estimate of 3%-4%. For 2016, the bank lowered its forecast growth range to 2.9%-3.9% from 3.2%-4.2%. The central bank said GDP likely expanded 2.1% in 2014, which is in line with the consensus of private economists. The National Statistics Institute is scheduled to report fourth-quarter GDP on Friday.

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