Reforms in Mexican Banking Syatem and Financial “Internationalization.”

Abstract

The Mexican financial system has undergone profound change, based on legal reforms in the last years. One of the most important is the privatization of the comercial banks under Pres. Carlos Salinas. These reforms have had two major goals: one is to constitute financial groups, integrating comercial banks and stock companies as the “holdings.” In this case, political stages have been advanced keeping pace with, and after, preceding that in the United States, so called, some reforms of Glass-Steagall Act.Another goal is the internationalization of mexican financial market, that means to promote the establishments of branches by mexican institutions in other countries, and to induce the subsidiaries of foreign comercial banks. It's one of the results of NAFTA's negotiations, but now mexican banking system has fallen into a dilemma between their need of foreign capitales and the lack of international competitive power.