Mexico

Mexico is considering changes to its stock market law to entice family-controlled companies to go public in a bid to end a years-long drought in public listings and help attract more investors to Latin America’s second largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The reforms being reviewed by regulators and government officials would both allow dual-class share listings and make it easier to block hostile takeovers, according to people with knowledge of the discussions and a draft proposal seen by Bloomberg News.

Late one Saturday night in April 2021, a Mexico City-based payroll lender proved Alexis Panton right, Bloomberg News reported. A year into the pandemic, Panton, who was then a debt strategist in New York for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., had been snarkily warning that the math underlying Crédito Real SAB de CV didn’t add up. Hedge funds and big banks had ignored him, instead backing the company, a rising star of Mexico’s shadow banking industry that borrowed cash from big-time foreign investors and cut smaller loans to low-income people and businesses.

Mexican officials on Monday announced the details of a new deal with companies to halt rising food prices, doubling down on a collaborative effort with the private sector as inflation hovers at a 22-year high, Reuters reported. More than a dozen foodmakers and retailers are part of the plan, which will waive certain regulatory requirements, Mexican Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O said.

The Bank of Mexico hiked its key interest rate on Thursday by 75 basis points to a record 9.25%, in line with forecasts and following in the footsteps of the U.S. Federal Reserve's own recent three-quarter of a percentage point increase, Reuters reported.

International bondholders are considering taking legal action in Mexico to recoup losses from troubled non-bank lender Credito Real, four sources have told Reuters, after bank creditors secured a settlement earlier this month, Reuters reported. Credito Real bonds have lost about 99% of their value since the company defaulted on a 170 million Swiss franc ($175.98 million) bond in February, kicking off a commercial liquidation process criticized by shareholders for lacking transparency.

The Bank of Mexico on Wednesday said it is not wed to hiking interest rates in line with the U.S. Federal Reserve and will evaluate all available data to bring down inflation, Reuters reported. There has been much market speculation on whether Banxico, as the Mexican central bank is known, will follow in lockstep with the Fed as it embarks on what has become the sharpest round of U.S. rate hikes since the 1980s.

The former Mexican airline Interjet has been formally accepted into a domestic bankruptcy process by a district judge. Interjet will now be able to negotiate up to 40 billion pesos in debt (nearly US$2 billion) with its creditors, SimpleFlying.com reported. On Tuesday, a Mexican judge approved the airline Interjet formally entering a bankruptcy process. Interjet ceased operations in December 2020, after a years-long crisis fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Creditors filed a lawsuit against Mexican multimedia conglomerate TV Azteca S.A.B. de C.V., controlled by business mogul Ricardo Salinas Pliego, after the company skipped out on payments to U.S. based investors for over a year while continuing to pay other debts in Mexico, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported.

Mexican consumer prices rose 0.42% during the first half of August, pushing annual headline inflation to 8.62%, both slightly ahead of market expectations, data from the national INEGI statistics agency showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The closely watched core price index, which strips out some volatile food and energy prices, climbed 0.49% in early August. Annual core inflation stood at 7.97%.

Unifin Financiera SAB drove about a fifth of trading in its own stock in the weeks before a collapse that sent shares and about $2.4 billion in bonds from Mexico’s biggest non-bank lender spiraling, Bloomberg News reported. A buyback fund from Unifin spent 12.9 million pesos ($640,00) to buy 800,776 shares from the end of June through Aug. 4, according to stock exchange filings. That’s 22% of the total volume over that period, data complied by Bloomberg show.