(Excerpt featured below. To read full report, go to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-10/mexican-bankers-put-on-brave-face-in-wake-of-us-laundering-blitz?embedded-checkout=true)

Reported by Michael O’Boyle

Every other month, Mexico’s bankers gather in a palatial bunker in the colonial center of the capital to dine together and meet with top officials. 

July’s meeting was one to remember. The country has just been rocked by one of its worst banking scandals, with the US deploying an unprecedented order accusing three well-known but small firms of potentially facilitating drug trafficking. 

Yet the mood among the nation’s top lenders Wednesday was optimistic — at times even defiant — as bankers spoke to the press after the mid-afternoon lunch of squash flower soup, veal cutlets and tiramisu. The event was packed with some 140 financiers, a couple dozen more than usual.

Emilio Romano, Bank of America’s Mexico chief who just took over in May as the new head of the Asociacion de Bancos de Mexico, assured journalists who gathered after the meal that Mexico’s economy would rebound from its slowdown to a near standstill under the global impact of Donald Trump’s trade war. Bankers are preparing support for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s plans to provide more credit to small businesses and substitute imports with Mexican-made goods, Romano added. 

Meanwhile, the money laundering allegations are just that — allegations that haven’t been proven, he said. The suspect operations highlighted by the US are a “normal” part of doing business as banks, Romano said.