Investors Ignore Downgrade: Mexico Pesos Rises

Via Bloomberg.com:
Mexico’s peso rose to a one-month high as investors at a Spanish debt auction shrugged off last week’s downgrade of the European nation, fueling optimism for global growth and the Latin American country’s exports.

The peso strengthened 0.5 percent to 13.4795 per U.S. dollar at 8:32 a.m. in Mexico City, from 13.5528 yesterday. The currency touched 13.4507 in intraday trading, the strongest level since Dec. 8. It’s appreciated 3.4 percent this year after tumbling 11.5 percent in 2011.

“The placement of sovereign debt had favorable results,” Rafael Camarena, an economist at Banco Santander SA in Mexico City, said in a telephone interview. “Basically, despite all the news that we’ve seen about Europe, financial markets didn’t see it as being bad. This is improving the European environment, benefitting emerging-market currencies including the peso.”

Ricardo Salinas, Mexican billionaire and owner of Banco Azteca, looks to expand microlending services to ‘the bottom of the pyramid’ in the U.S.

Ricardo Salinas, the Mexican billionaire whose banking and retail empire spans eight countries, is looking to expand his microlending business by offering the loans to lower income populations in the U.S. Ricardo Salinas said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York, that Grupo Elektra SA seeks clients at the “bottom of the pyramid” in terms of income and assets; U.S. households with less than $25,000 in annual income fit that profile. “[It] would be my dream to set up a series of 10,000 branches over the U.S. that addressed the bottom of the pyramid,” he said, adding, “It’s complicated because of the environment, but we’re looking at it.”