In this undated handout image from Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, Arturo Beltran Leyva is seen. A Mexican navy official said alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed in a shootout with sailors Wednesday Dec. 16, 2009. The official says Beltran Leyva and three other suspected members of his cartel were killed in a shootout with sailors at an apartment complex in the city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City.
Beltran Levya, known as the “boss of bosses,” was one of four brothers who split from the Sinaloa cartelLos Zetas several years ago and aligned themselves with , a group of former soldiers hired by the Gulf Cartel as hit men.
That split is believed to have fueled much of the bloodshed across Mexico, where more than 14,000 people have been killed in the past three years.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says the Beltran Leyva cartel is a key organization in importing and distributing tons of cocaine in the United States, as well as large quantities of heroin.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. watch a helicopter during a ceremony in Mexico City, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009. The U.S. government has given Mexico five helicopters to use in its fight against drug cartels.
U.S. officials delivered five “Bell 412 helicopters ” to Mexico on Tuesday to help the country in its fight against drug cartels.
The aircraft are part of more than $604 million worth of vehicles and equipment that the U.S. plans to give Mexico in the coming months.
Morgan Stanley today boosted its 2010 growth forecast for Mexico on the prospect it will benefit from a recovery in the U.S., the Latin American country’s biggest trading partner.
Mexico’s state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) expects production at its Chicontepec field to rise to 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2009, a Pemex official said Wednesday.
“It will be close to 40 (thousand bpd) by the end of this year,” Jesus Puente Trevino, advisor to the general director of Pemex, told reporters on the sidelines of Deloitte’s 2009 Oil & Gas Conference.
Chicontepec, which was producing 29,000 bpd in September, is a focus of long-term Pemex efforts to increase production as major fields including Cantarell decline.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon nominated Carstens as New Finance Minister for Mexico
Mexican President Felipe Calderon nominated Carstens as the country’s central bank governor, replacing Guillermo Ortiz, whose second six-year term expires at the end of the year.
The outgoing Ortiz clashed with Calderon last year for keeping interest rates higher than the government wanted as Mexico sank into recession. Analysts said Carstens was a well-respected professional who would not cave to political pressure. “This guy is very responsible, and he is a very competent technocrat. Even if he was dovish in his work at the Finance Ministry, that does not mean he will be dovish at the central bank,” said a strategist in Mexico City.
Mexican banks will likely grow lending at a faster rate than the economy next year as Mexico bounces back from its worst recession since the 1995 peso crisis, according to a top industry executive.
“We estimate that credit will grow at a rate superior to that of the overall economy, but not reaching the level it had between 2006 and 2008,” – Enrique Zorrilla, chief executive of Citigroup Inc. (C) unit Banamex, said at a press conference Tuesday.
Zorrilla said commercial and mortgage lending should post the strongest growth in 2010, while consumer lending will expand at a much more modest pace.
The Bank of Mexico has forecast an expansion in gross domestic product of 2.5% to 3.5% in 2010, after contracting an estimated 7% this year due to a recession in the U.S. that hit Mexico’s export focused industrial sector.
Mexico’s banks reported 1.889 trillion pesos ($145.5 billion) of loans on their books at the end of October, nearly unchanged from a year-ago, as a drop in consumer loans offset growth in commercial loans and mortgages.
Banks have restricted consumer loans, especially credit cards, as rising unemployment and poor lending standards earlier in the decade triggered a surge in defaults.
Marriott International said Monday it will triple the number of hotels it has in Mexico over the next decade as the Bethesda hotelier seeks to exploit demand in developing countries, where access to capital can be easier than in the United States
The deal with Pulso Hotelero to open 36 moderate-priced Fairfield Inns starting in 2011 will increase the number of Marriott hotels in Mexico from 19 to 57 across five of its brands.
Three men with links to a Canadian mining company have been charged in the killing of a Mexican activist, threatening already strained relations between the countries on the eve of a visit to the same region by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean.
- [theglobeandmail.com]
Mexico spent $1.172 billion to buy oil hedges for 2010, covering a possible revenue shortfall if production falls for the sixth straight year and prices don’t recover from about a five-year low.
Mexico purchased put options that give it the option, not the obligation, to sell its oil for $57 a barrel next year, the Finance Ministry said in an e-mail statement today.
“We want this as an insurance policy,” Finance Minister Agustin Carstens said in New York today. “If we don’t collect any resources from this transaction it’s OK because that means oil would have been above $57 a barrel.” – bloomberg.com
