Category: Regions

Mexican financial group Banorte posted a net profit of $98 million for the first quarter, up 78 percent year-on-year. The firrm’s profit from its core banking business totaled $81 million, up 99 percent. The Banorte group includes a bank, a brokerage house, a pension fund and an asset management fund.

Mexican Finance Minister Francisco Gil Diaz has asked prosecutors to bring criminal charges against TV Azteca Chairman Ricardo Salinas Pliego on allegations he used privileged information to trade shares. Mexican regulators separately fined Azteca, its chairman and board member Pedro Padilla $2.3 million for securities law violations.

Mexican financial group Santander Serfin, owned by Spanish largest financial holding Grupo Santander, posted a net profit of $142 million for the first quarter 2005, down 5.5 percent year-on-year. Santander Serfin’s credit portfolio expanded 20 percent and its market share stood at 17 percent at the end of March.

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.

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.

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.

Statoil, Norway’s largest oil and gas group, has said it would pay $2 billion for the entire US Gulf of Mexico deepwater portfolio of EnCana Corporation, a Canadian oil and natural gas producer. EnCana owns a number of high quality discoveries and exploration opportunities in the Gulf, with the potential to deliver 30,000 net barrels oil equivalent per day by 2008-9. Output could be three times greater by 2012.

Mexico’s largest media company Televisa posted a net profit of $54 million in the first quarter, up 21% year-on-year. Sales rose 17% to $575 million, while the company’s total debt load came in at $1.8 billion ($210 million of which is short term). Televisa also announced it has bought the rights to broadcast the 2006 World Cup, which will take place in Germany.