Monterrey, Mexico

Monterrey is a major industrial center in northern Mexico, producing a GDP of 78.5 billion US dollars. The city’s GDP per capita is 607,042 Mexican pesos or $46,634 US dollars. The city is rated by Fortune magazine as the best city in Latin America for business and is currently ranked third best by the América Economía magazine. The city has prominent positions in sectors such as steel, cement, glass, auto parts, and brewing. The city’s economic wealth has been attributed in part to its proximity with the United States-Mexican border and economic links to the United States. Industrialization was accelerated in the mid-19th century by the Compañia Fundidora de Fierro y Acero Monterrey, a steel-processing company. Today, Monterrey is home to transnational conglomerates such as Cemex (the world’s third largest cement company), FEMSA (Coca-Cola Latin America, largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the world), Alfa (petrochemicals, food, telecommunications and auto parts), Axtel (telecommunications), Vitro (glass), Selther (leading mattress and rest systems firm in Latin America), Gruma (food), and Banorte (financial services). The FEMSA corporation owned a large brewery, the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery (Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma) that produces the brands Sol, Tecate, Indio, Dos Equis and Carta Blanca among others, in the beginning of the year Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery was sold to Dutch-based company Heineken. By the end of the same year, there were more than 13,000 manufacturing companies, 55,000 retail stores, and more than 52,000 service firms in Monterrey.