Americas Inc

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Peru’s Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cia had their first offi­cial meet­ing Mon­day dis­cussing coop­er­a­tion and their coun­tries’ bilat­eral free trade deal at the White House. Dur­ing their half-hour meet­ing, the two lead­ers agreed to review details of their free trade deal which has been in effect since Jan­u­ary 2009.

Brazil­ian steel­maker Ger­dau offered to pay up to $1.7 bil­lion to take full own­er­ship of its North Amer­i­can unit, look­ing to reduce bor­row­ing costs and increase effi­ciency. Ameris­teel shares surged 54.7 per­cent to $11.09 in New York, while Gerdau’s most traded pre­ferred shares were up 1.9 per­cent to 24.71 reais in Sao Paulo.

Telefonica’s new 6.5 bil­lion euro bid for Por­tu­gal Telecom’s (PT) stake in Brazil­ian mobile oper­a­tor Vivo boosted PT shares as a deal looked more likely. Hav­ing rejected out­right a first bid of 5.7 bil­lion euros in May, PT’s board said it would let share­hold­ers decide on the new offer for its half of the joint ven­ture that con­trols Vivo.

Brazil­ian min­ing com­pany Vale will raise iron ore prices about 35 per­cent to as much as $145 per met­ric ton in July as part of a switch to quar­terly pric­ing. O Estado de Sao Paulo news­pa­per did not say where it obtained details about the per­cent­age of the price increase by Vale.

Mex­ico is dead last among Latin America’s five largest economies in cell phone use per capita. The prob­lem, gov­ern­ment offi­cials say, is bil­lion­aire Car­los Slim. His com­pany, Amer­ica Móvil (AMX), con­trols 71 per­cent of Mex­i­can cel­lu­lar traf­fic. When the results came in from a May 25 auc­tion, it looked like Slim had fur­ther tight­ened his grip.

A Frida Kahlo por­trait of a pre-Hispanic war­rior was the top sell­ing work in a sale of Latin Amer­i­can art, which also set five auc­tion records, includ­ing one for Mex­i­can artist Jose Clemente Orozco. The evening auc­tion at Christie’s on Wednes­day fetched $16.8 mil­lion, its strongest Latin Amer­i­can sale in two years.

Banco San­tander Brasil may be only the third-biggest pri­vate sec­tor bank in Brazil, but it has become No. 1 with some of the world’s top hedge funds as they seek to tap into the Brazil­ian eco­nomic suc­cess story. But it didn’t take long for shares to come under pressure.

Tem­ple­ton Asset Man­age­ment Ltd.’s Mark Mobius said he’s been buy­ing stocks in Brazil, Rus­sia, India and China in the past month and called the slump in emerging-economy shares a “cor­rec­tion” in a bull mar­ket. “Despite the fact that a lot of peo­ple think that we are enter­ing into a bear mar­ket, we don’t believe so.”

Mex­i­can bil­lion­aire Car­los Slim, the world’s rich­est man, plans to merge his mobile and fixed-line busi­nesses in Brazil in a bid to slash costs, Folha de S.Paulo news­pa­per reported on Wednes­day, cit­ing unnamed sources close to Slim. Slim plans to merge fixed-line com­pany Embra­tel with Claro, the local unit of Amer­ica Movil.

Por­tu­gal Tele­com and part­ner Tele­fon­ica fought bit­terly over their Brazil­ian mobile joint ven­ture Vivo on Wednes­day using threats and angry words to try to gain the upper hand. Tele­fon­ica wants con­trol of the high-growth busi­ness, which is Brazil’s top mobile provider. PT wants to hold onto its only sig­nif­i­cant growth story.