Relevant News
1. Pharmaceutical companies achieved to extend their patents on 21% of their 2009 past due patent products through a judge decision.
2. Nissan Mexicana’s sales increased 14.5% vs. last month. Accordingly, the company’s management declared that its sales have stabilized and will be increasing month by month.
3. Cemex informed that all of their debt holders agreed to their proposal to refinance their corporate debt.
4. The Chrysler Group is planning to produce the Fiat 500 in their Toluca facility.
5. The Mexican Government along with the commercial banks are structuring a financing program to support Small and Medium Sized companies’ sales to the public sector. The program will have a range of MXN 1,500 Mio to MXN 3,000 Mio.
6. The VW Mexico’s workers syndicate declared a strike, after only 5 hours of negotiations with VW’s management team. The strike lasted less than a week.
7. Lorenzo Zambrano, Cemex’ CEO, expects good results for the company in the next 4 years, estimating that from 2009 to 2013 the company will grow 10% p.a. in sales.
8. Santander invests EUR 132 Mio in Mexico’s biggest call center which offers its services to clients of the bank in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay, with a capacity to attend 100.000 calls per hour.
9. GM Mexico starts recovering, as all of their Mexican production facilities will increase its production and have announced to employ more workers.
Economic Highlights:
- The Mexican Central Bank (Banxico) maintained its benchmark rate TIIE compared with last month.
- As of August, 28th the FX rate was 13.25 Pesos per USD, practically unchanged since the end of July.
- Inflation in August decreased slightly to 5.12% yoy.
- Mexican oil prices closed August in USD 68.58 per barrel; a 3.19% increase over July.
- International reserves stood at USD 73.1 Bn., a decrease of USD 0.4 Bn. over last month.
- The Country Risk for Mexico at the end of August was 233 bps, a 4 bps increase vs. last month’s closing.
- The unemployment rate as of August was 6.12%, representing a 1.97% increase over the last 12 months.
- The Mexican Stock Market closed June at 28,599 units; a 5.75% increase vs. July’s closing. During the first 8 months of the year the Mexican Stock Market has accumulated a gain of 27.79% in MXN and 33.33% in USD.
