Head of Mexico's stock exchange quits

The veteran head of Mexico's stock exchange, Luis Tellez, has announced his resignation and will step down from the start of next year.

The former minister and member of Mexico's new sovereign fund plans to "dedicate himself to new projects", according to a statement. Mr Tellez declined to comment immediately on Tuesday on why he was quitting.

It is not yet clear who will take over as bourse chief, a position Mr Tellez has held since 2009. Under his stewardship, the stock market has developed a flourishing market in so-called Fibras, akin to real estate investment trusts, or REITS, and has just joined the MILA bourse tie-up with Chile, Peru and Colombia.

From 2008 to 2013, ebitda rose at an annual compound rate of 15.6 per cent to 1.1bn pesos and the stock market's share price has risen nearly 300 per cent. The bourse's market capitalisation surged to 16.5bn pesos as of October 17 from 6.2bn in May 2009.

Mr Tellez's new position at the sovereign fund, which will manage oil revenues, raised questions of a possible conflict of interest since Mr Tellez sits on the board of Sempra Energy.

However, in a lawsuit brought by billionaire businessman Ricardo Salinas against Mr Tellez, Grupo Salinas sought compensation for statements by the stock market chief that, it alleged, caused moral damage following changes to bourse methodology that could exclude the group from the benchmark IPC index. In April, a Mexico City court upheld the case against Mr Tellez, which he had tried to appeal. At that time the stock market insisted that the ruling did not mean he had to leave.

According to stock exchange data, during his tenure the number of trades has increased tenfold, and the amount traded has also grown up to eight times.Financing via the stock market has risen to nearly 800bn pesos in 2013, from 581bn in 2008.

© The Financial Times Limited 2014. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation