AMLO Challenges Banamex Sale

Mexico City Mayor Andrés López Obrador says that if elected president next year he would try to tax shareholders who sold Banamex, the country’s biggest bank, to Citigroup for $12.7 billion in 2001. Sellers avoided taxes because the deal was structured as a public offer on the Mexican stock exchange. Populist López Obrador is a frontrunner in the election race. However, he also said he would finance government spending by improving efficiency, not taxes, and ruled out renegotiating the Nafta trade pact with the US and Canada.