Frowning All the Way to the Bank

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) has reported a 0.1 percent decline in same-store sales for the month of November 2006.

The world’s biggest retailer said it had expected same-store sales to be flat compared with the same period last year (which had been disappointing to Wall Street analysts), but it hoped early discounts on big-ticket gift items at the start of the holiday shopping season would reverse those expectations.

The retailer also announced it has gained the go-ahead to open its own bank in Mexico. That country’s finance ministry has given final approval for the bank, Banco Wal-Mart de México Adelante, to begin operating during the second half of 2007.

Wal-Mart has so far failed to gain approval for its own bank in the United States. But most Mexicans do not have bank accounts and Wal-Mart overcame resistance by announcing plans to offer them the opportunity to have one.

Wal-Mart’s Mexican banks will operate in spaces carved out of many of its 877 stores in the country. The number of banks is not yet certain, and the rollout will be slow.

Among its competitors in the banking business are the Mexican units of global giants like Citigroup and HSBC, which control more than 70 percent of Mexico’s banking.

In the United States, Wal-Mart’s application for an industrial bank — to process credit card transactions, the company said — is frozen. Community banks as well as larger ones have joined Wal-Mart’s more usual detractors among unions, small merchants and community activists to oppose the bank. Wal-Mart has promised not to put branches in its stores. But at the moment, its application is under a six-month moratorium imposed in July by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on industrial banks.