Monday, 24 February 2014
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
The News
If you’ve ever eaten at Chili’s, California Pizza Kitchen or P.F.
Chang’s China Bistro, you’re a customer of Alsea, the giant Mexican
restaurant operator and food distributor. Added to its holdings in 2013
were the ubiquitous VIPS coffee shops (all 360 of them) and the
Starbucks and Burger King Mexican locales. That brought Alsea CEO Fabián
Gosselin a company-record 441 new store openings in 2013, taking its
total stores to 862. Not surprisingly, it also doubled Alsea’s debt to
5.04 billion pesos . . . Banamex is investing $100 million to expand and
update its automatic teller machines. More than 1,200 new machines will
be added to the nationwide network of Mexico’s second-largest bank,
bringing the total to 7,900. A thousand of the new machines will use
what Luis Villalpando, executive director for operations and
collections, calls “state-of-the-art technology.” That means, among
other things, that customers will be able to use the machines to pay
bills and deposit cash to their accounts . . . Grupo Alfa, the Monterrey
conglomerate in high-tech aluminum components, food products,
electronics y communications and petroleum products, is ready to invest
in the reforming energy sector in a big way. Alfa Finance Director Ramón
Leal says the company is ready to invest $2 billion: “What’s important
for us is to be ready for the projects that the energy reform is going
to bring.”
ON THE ROAD
Juan Marco Gutiérrez Wanless, CEO of Grupo Kuo, the Mexican chemical,
food and automotive conglomerate, doesn’t seem overly concerned about
his company’s 5 percent drop in revenue in 2013. He put the blame on the
general 2013 malaise in the automotive and chemical sectors; its food
product sales, including the Herdez line, rose 9 percent . . . Ever
wonder what the Kuo corporate name refers to? In reality, it’s about a
Seinfeldian nothing. According to the company web site, “The name Kuo
was adopted because it is a short word, easy to remember, pronounced the
same in any language and transmits a message of balance and solidity” .
. . Mastretta Cars, founded by the Mexican designer and automotive
expert Juan Daniel Mastretta Guzmán as Mastretta Design in 1987,
introduced the Mastretta MXT, the first Mexican sports car, in 2010. Now
CEO Conrad Giesemann has announced that Mastretta Cars has opened its
first dealership, in Toluca, State of Mexico. “This is an important step
for us,” he said, “because now we’re truly making our cars available to
the general public.”
IN WITH THE NEW
Guillermo Babatz, former head of the National Banking and Securities
Commission (CNBV), is the newest member of the board of directors of
Scotiabank. John Mayberry, chairman of the board, said Babatz’s
experience with government regulations will “freshen” internal
Scotiabank discussions . . . Starting March 13, Interjet will begin
scheduled flights from Mexico City to the new Palenque International
Airport, inaugurated on Feb. 12 by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Interjet CEO José Luis Garza said there will be two flights a week to
the tourist center. . . Patricia Espinosa, who served as foreign
relations secretary in the administration of Felipe Calderón, is
carrying the ball for Mexico as ambassador to Germany. Mexico will be
the official partner at the upcoming International Tourism Fair to be
held in Berlin March 5-9. The theme of the fair is a the familiar
Mexican Tourism Board slogan: “Mexico: Live it to believe it,” and
Espinosa summarized her nation’s participation with an even more
familiar phrase, associated with the president: “It’s Mexico’s moment.”
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