Mexico — Chrysler Group LLC will invest 550 million dollars in Mexico to produce Fiat 500s for the United States and Latin America, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Monday.
The investment would generate 400 direct jobs and more than 1,200 indirect jobs, Calderon said at a launch ceremony at the Chrysler plant in Toluca, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of Mexico City.
The vehicles would be produced at Toluca, one of five Chrysler plants in Mexico, and would start distribution at year end to the United States and Latin America, Fiat chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne told AFP.
Mexico “has an ideal position as a bridge between NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada) and Latin America,” Marchionne said.
Mexico would play a key role in the renovation of Chrysler, he added.
Chrysler formed a global strategic alliance with Italy’s Fiat Group after emerging from government-backed bankruptcy last year.
The automobile industry represents 20 percent of Mexico’s manufacturing GDP, and more than 70 percent of its exports go to the United States.
TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican authorities on Monday arrested two suspected leaders of a brutal drug trafficking gang that terrorized the border city of Tijuana for several years, a U.S. official said.
The capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured last month. Teodoro and Manuel Garcia are brothers.
Lopez, known as “El Muletas,” and Garcia, known as “El Chiquilin,” were arrested Monday in La Paz, a city in the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She had no further details on the operation that led to their capture.
By contrast, present-day conditions “lend themselves to a much closer interaction, much better co-ordination in the messages, between the federal government and the Banco de Mexico”. Mr Carstens said closer co-operation with the government would involve “having more of a discussion and a joint understanding [about] what is going on in the economy. Such discussions would lead to “much better information to take monetary policy decisions”.
“There is no reason to worry; the only thing that both the president and the Banco de Mexico under my leadership are trying to do is to exploit those synergies that are possible,” he said.
Underlining that he would be prepared to take decisions that were not “fully in line with what the federal government expects or wants”, Mr Carstens said one of the legally established roles of the bank was to advise the federal government on economic and financial matters. “President Calderón, when he invited me to become governor, he told me that he expects me to provide that service.”
if America can do this , why cant Mexico do this? the fed works closely with the president in America.
Archaeologists believe a newly discovered 1,100-year-old tomb in Mexico may hold clues to finally understanding the decline of the Mayan empire.
The ancient tomb was discovered at the site of the Mayan city of Tonina in Mexico’s state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.
Experts have dated the find – which included a stone sarcophagus, ceramics and human bones – to between 840 and 900 AD. – read more
“This is very interesting, because we are going to see from the bones who these people are, after the Maya empire.
“Everyone who has studied the Mayan world has the same concern because from 820 AD onwards, all areas of the ancient empire were abandoned.
“That marvellous ancient civilisation completely disappeared and in its place, these Toltec groups appeared.
“They already had a corporate organisation which was not elitist and destroyed what the ancient dynasties had created.”
But some experts have expressed doubt over the significance of the find.
“One tomb, even if it is very fancy, isn’t going to answer big things about the trajectory of Maya history all over the place … maybe locally,” said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas.
Mexico’s central bank chief, Agustin Carstens, said on Wednesday the country should accumulate more international reserves to protect it from future volatility in the foreign exchange market.
Carstens said Mexico’s economy was recovering better than policy makers had expected but he was concerned the peso currency could take a hit when the U.S. Federal Reserve eventually starts raising interest rates.
Carstens said now was a good time for the bank to buy dollars, and higher reserves could allow Mexico to gradually extricate itself from a line of credit with the International Monetary Fund.
“We want to take advantage of these good moments in financial markets for accumulating reserves,” Agustin Carstens said.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The government of El Salvador has filed a complaint with Mexican officials over the killing of three migrants and the rape of four others by armed men in southern Mexico.
El Salvador’s deputy minister for Salvadorans abroad says about 150 migrants were pulled off a train by unidentified assailants in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
The official, Juan Jose Garcia, says three men were slain and four women raped in the Saturday attack. Salvadoran migrants frequently hop freight trains in Mexico trying to reach the United States.
Garcia said Tuesday that the complaint was filed with Mexican police and Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.
The institute says it has no immediate comment
Mexican stocks are more attractive than Brazilian shares because the nation will benefit from the U.S. economic rebound and be hurt less by China’s lending curbs, said John Lomax, a strategist at HSBC Holdings Plc.
“The U.S. is in the better side of the equity market cycle,” Lomax said in an interview during a trip to Rio de Janeiro.
Mexico sends 80 percent of its exports to the U.S., while China replaced the U.S. as the top destination for Brazil’s exports last year. Lomax rates Mexican stocks “overweight” and recommends investors be “neutral” on Brazil.
The Mexican government says the British-based bank HSBC will invest $700 million to increase the operating capital of its Mexico subsidiary by about 30 percent.
The office of President Felipe Calderon says the investment was announced during a Monday meeting at the presidential residence with top executives of HSBC’s Mexico subsidiary.
Spokesmen for HSBC Group PLC were not immediately available to comment on the report.
Calderon’s office says the investment shows HSBC’s confidence in the Mexican economy. It says the boost will strengthen HSBC’s capitalization and branch office network in Mexico and help increase lending to small- andmedium-size businesses.
Mexico’s benchmark local bonds are poised for the biggest annual rally in four years after underperforming regional debt in 2009 as the economy recovers and the peso gains, Stone Harbor Investment Partners said.
The yield on Mexico’s 10 percent peso bond due in December 2024 may plunge about 40 basis points, or 0.40 percentage point, in 2010, to 7.80 percent, said Pablo Cisilino, who manages $11.5 billion in emerging-market assets at Stone Harbor in New York. That would be the biggest one-year drop since 2006.
Mexican domestic debt returned 7.7 percent last year, less than the 10 percent return posted by Latin American local bonds on average, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s ELMI+ index. The region’s second-largest economy will grow 2.95 percent in 2010 after contracting 7 percent last year, the most since 1932, the median forecast of 19 economists in a Bloomberg survey shows.
“People were too pessimistic on the growth outlook for Mexico and very pessimistic about the peso,” Cisilino said. “Things are changing. They’re starting to come around.” - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a6oOsxViKQ04
The discount chain said yesterday that it will spend $1 billion renovating 340 stores while opening fewer than 10 new ones in 2010.
That’s dramatically fewer than the 58 it opened in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31 and the 91 it opened in fiscal 2008. The renovated stores will also offer more groceries.
Brazil’s No. 2 private bank Banco Bradesco SA (BBD, BBDC4.BR) announced Friday it agreed to buy IBI Mexico for an undisclosed price in its first excursion into international credit card administration.
The bank said it had no immediate plans to use IBI Mexico as a beachhead to set up retail banking operations in Mexico, but the deal reinforces ideas that Brazilian banks are increasingly looking for opportunities abroad following two years of consolidation at home.
Bradesco will pay cash for all shares in IBI Mexico, which administers the consumer finance arm of clothing retailer C&A in Mexico. In the process, it will acquire a credit portfolio of 1.3 billion pesos ($99 million) and over 1 million credit card accounts, said Marcelo Noronha, head of the bank’s credit card business.
“We grabbed the opportunity to extend our existing relationship with C&A outside Brazil,” he told journalists on a conference call. “We identified it as a very well run asset.”
With acquisition possibilities limited at home and many international banks weakened by the recent credit crisis, Brazilian banks are increasingly being linked to foreign banks.
Brazil’s No. 1 private bank Itau Unibanco Holding SA (ITUB, ITUB4.BR) has said it is assessing international opportunities, although it denied a recent report that it is considering buying stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LYG). It already has retail banking interests in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and the U.S. – from: online.wsj.com
