Pemex makes a profit: Mexico’s state oil company Pemex reported a net profit of MX$87.94bn (US$4.69bn) in the first quarter, citing lower financial costs and a recovery in the international prices of crude oil and other fuels. This was the second consecutive quarter in the black, after...
United Airlines to buy into Avianca: Avianca Holdings (which operates in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and the Caribbean) and Avianca Brasil say they are discussing a merger, which would also bring in United Airlines of the US as minority partner. Two brothers, Germán and José...
Televisa linked to FIFA investigation: Televisa, the Mexican media conglomerate controlled by the Azcárraga family, could be involved in the ongoing scandal affecting FIFA, the international football federation. US prosecutors have claimed that an unnamed affiliate of a major...
Tough at the top in Brazil. According to a report by the Bloomberg news agency, the Brazilian recession is taking its toll on chief executives. At least 40 of the CEOs of 110 Brazil-based companies with assets of US$1bn or more have been replaced over the last two years, the report said....
President Juan Manuel Santos maintained that the peace process was back on track this week after government negotiators re-launched talks with their counterparts from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) in Cuba. Santos said 500 proposals from those who campaigned successfully...
Development: On 7 November the judge investigating a corruption scandal at Ecuador’s state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, ruled that four of the accused (including the brother and sister of a former energy minister, Carlos Pareja) must be taken into custody while the investigation...
The murder of a Mexican teenager has sparked a fierce legal debate about how to protect human rights on the Mexico-US border.
In 2010, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent Jesús Mesa gunned down a 15-year-old Mexican national, Adrián Hernández Guereca, as he...
Intercorp bets on Peruvian growth: A recent profile by the Spanish newspaper El País highlighted the steady growth of the Peruvian conglomerate Intercorp, led by the extremely low-profile businessman Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor Persivale, known by his initials, CRP. According to the...
The four founding members of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) have agreed that they will not allow the bloc’s newest member, Venezuela, to assume Mercosur’s pro-tempore presidency until it meets all the requirements of full membership. This decision was taken as way out of...
Liverpool buys Ripley stake: Mexican department store chain Puerto de Liverpool said it had signed an agreement with the Calderón family, majority shareholders of Chile’s Ripley chain, under which it would launch an IPO to acquire a 25.5% stake in the Chilean company. Ripley has a...
‘Welcome to Hell’ read the banner unfurled by a few dozen police officers and firefighters at the arrivals gate of the new terminal 2 of Rio de Janeiro’s international Galeão airport: ‘Police and firefighters don’t get paid and whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe’. As protests go, it...
Oi files for bankruptcy: Oi, the only locally controlled mobile phone operator in Brazil, filed for bankruptcy protection with debts of BRL65bn (US$19bn) on 20 June, after rescheduling talks ahead of a EUR231m bond repayment failed to produce agreement. The company has been badly affected by the...
With the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games drawing closer (they will be held between 5-21 August) journalists all over the world are looking for things to say about them. Hyper media coverage can at worst trigger something of a feeding frenzy, where all security risks can be amplified and exaggerated....
Corpbanca and Itaú Fuse: On 1 April, the Chile-based Corpbanca and the local subsidiary of Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco formalised their long-drawn-out merger process. The merged entity, the fourth largest bank in the Chilean market, will be known formally as Itaú Corpbanca. It will trade under the Itaú...
Despite the announcement by the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), Colombia’s second-largest leftist guerrilla group, that it will soon engage in formal peace negotiations with the government, it has launched a military offensive in recent weeks, prompting a counter-offensive by the armed...
Marcelo Odebrecht sentenced: Marcelo Odebrecht, former president of Odebrecht SA, Latin America’s largest construction and civil engineering company, has been sentenced to 19 years imprisonment by a Brazilian federal court. The sentence was for his part in the bribery, money laundering and...
Following the Super Tuesday primaries Donald Trump remains the frontrunner to win the Republican presidential nomination in the US. Nomination is not yet a sure thing. If successful the property tycoon-turned-politician will need to go on to confront a Democratic party opponent, most likely to be...
América Móvil profitability facing a squeeze.
Mexico-based telecoms giant América Móvil reported a six-fold increase in profits to MXN15.7bn (US$835mn) in the fourth quarter of 2015. The improvement was largely due to a sharp reduction in exchange rate losses, which reduced financial costs....
Development: Peru’s real annual GDP growth came in at 3.26% overall in 2015, the national statistics institute (INEI) reported on 15 February.
Significance: Growth in December was a strong 6.39% year on year, the highest in 23 months, lifting the full-year GDP result above even the government’s...
Until recently, security concerns in the run-up to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were dominated by fears that the historically high levels of violence in the city would impact upon the 2016 Games. Added to this were the usual fears that the event might make an inviting target for terrorist...
