Femsa, the world’s second-largest Coca-Cola bottler, said first-quarter net income fell 17% to $64 million as interest costs rose faster than sales at its soft drink, beer and Oxxo convenience-store units. Femsa’s interest charges were $90 million, a 29% increase from a year ago, after the company paid $1.25 billion in August for the 30% stake that InBev owned in Femsa’s beer unit. The company’s net debt rose 26% from a year earlier to $3.58 billion.
Category: Paywall
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Gol Sells Shares
Gol, Brazil’s third-largest airline, and AIG Capital raised $205 million in a sale of 14.7 million new and existing Gol shares. Gol is increasing its fleet to add new domestic and international routes. The carrier boosted its order with Boeing by four aircraft last month as economic growth in Brazil spurred demand for air travel and the airline took market share from competitors.
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Remizov Joins DrKW
German investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein has appointed Alexei Remizov, 36, as director responsible for Latin America Sovereign Origination, based in New York. Remizov moved over from JP Morgan where he headed the bank’s Global Country Risk Assessment and Sovereign Advisory Group. He also worked at Standard & Poor’s as associate director in the Latin America Sovereign Ratings Group and at the World Bank’s Latin American and Central & Eastern Europe country operations departments. Remizov reports to Enrique Bustamante, managing director and head of Corporate Finance & Origination, Latin America.
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Salinas Pliego in Trouble Again
Mexican Finance Minister Francisco Gil Diaz asked prosecutors to bring criminal charges against billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego because he used privileged information to trade shares. Salinas Pliego (no relation to the disgraced former president) owns TV Azteca, and a banking and retail empire. In a separate case, Mexican regulators fined Azteca, Salinas Pliego and board member Pedro Padilla $2.3 million for securities law violations. The government’s latest case against Salinas Pliego goes beyond civil charges filed by the SEC, which in January accused him and Azteca of securities fraud for his part in a deal that earned him $109 million. The government’s case will test Mexican legislation for the first time since it made insider-trading a criminal offense. The charges carry a prison term of two to seven years. TV Azteca has separately filed a criminal suit against Gil Diaz accusing him of trying to block a program criticizing a 1994 government bailout of Mexico’s banks and the 2001 sale of Banamex to Citigroup for $12.5 billion.
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Shakeup in Brasília
Senior officials at the Brazilian Finance Ministry and Central Bank have quit unexpectedly. Marcos Lisboa, undersecretary for economic policy at the Finance Ministry has left and will be replaced by Bernard Appy, a close aide of Finance Minister Antonio Palocci. At the Central Bank, Eduardo Loyo resigned from the Central Bank where he was director of special studies and a voting member of the monetary policy council, to join the International Monetary Fund as Brazil’s representative. Neither change is expected to have a significant impact on government or Central Bank policy.
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Venezuela Tightens Control
Venezuela’s Central Bank has announced fixed maximum lending and minimum deposit rates for commercial banks, which will take effect May 1. Banks will have to cap lending rates at the equivalent of the Central Bank’s discount rate minus 50 basis points. With the discount rate at 28.5%, banks will have to limit the rates they charge to 28%. Banks will also have to pay a minimum of 6.5% on saving accounts and 10% on certificates of deposit of 28 days or more.
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Telmex’s Net Rises
Net profit at Mexico’s biggest telecom network Telmex rose 10% in the first quarter to $568 million, while revenue jumped 28% to $3.5 billion. The company’s total debts rose 54% to $9.3 billion. Telmex is taking on debt to invest in Brazil and other parts of South America. Revenues from Mexico, where Telmex controls 95% of the market, have stagnated in recent years.
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América Móvil Ups Investments
Mexico’s biggest wireless company América Móvil will invest $200 million in Peru this year as part of the company’s expansion throughout South America. América Móvil also says it plans to buy Brazilian wireless telecommunications services provider Telemig Celular Participações. América Móvil is one of the two largest mobile phone operators in Latin America, and competes directly with Spanish wireless telecom provider Telefónica Móviles.
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Brazil: Lending Increases
Brazilian bank lending rose 1.6% in March, the fourteenth straight monthly increase, to $201 billion after rising 1.4% in both February and January. Lending has risen 30% since September 2003 when President Inácio Lula da Silva began a program of payroll loans to make borrowing more affordable by reducing the risk of defaults. The program allows workers to borrow at lower costs because repayments are deducted directly from their wages.
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Cemex Sells Stake in CBB
Mexican cement producer Cemex has sold its 12% stake in Chilean cement producer Cementos Bío Bío (CBB) for about $66 million. Cemex sold its 31.44 million CBB shares on the Santiago Stock Exchange to Santander Investment at the minimum fixed price of $2.08 per share. Cemex has decided to sell non-core assets in order to pay off debt after it completed its purchase of UK ready-mix concrete maker RMC for $5.8 billion in March.