Kansas City Southern de México, S.A. de C.V. is a Mexican railroad and operating subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC). The company was founded in 1996 as Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana, a joint venture between KCS and Transportación Maritima Mexicana after the companies won a concession from the Mexican government to operate the 3315 mi Northeast Railroad connecting Monterrey and Mexico City with a US port of entry at Laredo, Texas and seaports at Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz. In 2005, KCS bought out its partner's shares in the railroad, giving it full control.
Canadian Pacific Railway purchased KCSM in December 2021 for US$31 billion. On April 14, 2023, KCS and KCSM became subsidiaries of CPR, and began conducting business under the name of their new parent, CPKC.
History
Kansas City Southern de México was originally formed in 1996 when Kansas City Southern Industries and Transportación Maritima Mexicana (TMM) purchased a government concession to operate on a rail system in Mexico. It was the Mexican President, Ernesto Zedillo, who proposed the privatization of the Mexican railways because the Mexican railway system had fallen into a state of disrepair and needed drastic work to become profitable. Since the late 1930s, Mexican trains and tracks were the property of the government as Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (Mexican National Railways). When the decision to privatize the railroad was made, only 15% of freight was moved by rail in Mexico (versus 42% in the US