Latin America’s largest beverage company, Fomento Economico Mexicano, () might have a couple of good reasons to pop the bubbly.

In December, public documents revealed that Bill Gates’ investment arm, Cascade Investment, had taken a 5% stake in the company, which goes by the name Femsa.

On Wednesday, beverage giant Coca-Cola () announced that Latin American soft drink volumes grew 10% in the fourth quarter, making the region one of the best performers in the world.

Since Femsa’s largest division is subsidiary Coca-Cola Femsa, () the No. 1 Coke bottler in Latin America, the news might give investors a possible clue into a fair chunk of Femsa’s fourth-quarter results, which will be reported on Tuesday.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial estimate that fourth-quarter earnings will jump 35% from a year ago, to 58 cents a share, and rise 24% for the full year, to $2.10 a share, on revenue of around $13 billion.

Mexicans Like Coke

Monterrey, Mexico-based Femsa derives about 45% of its overall revenue and nearly 60% of its operating income from Coca-Cola Femsa, in which it owns a majority stake. Coke is the leading drink brand in Mexico, as it is in the rest of Latin America.

Mexico accounts for about half of Femsa’s soft drink volume. The rest is spread over about seven other Latin American countries, including Brazil and Venezuela.

Coca-Cola said unit case volume in Mexico its highest per capita drink market in the world rose 9% in the quarter. It added another 25 servings per person in 2007, management said in a conference call. Brazil delivered double-digit growth for Coke.

While carbonated drinks in the U.S. are flat, “Latin America is still a growth market,” said Lauren Torres, a beverage analyst at HSBC Securities.

She estimates that Femsa will show total case growth of 6% in the fourth quarter, slightly above its third-quarter growth rate and better than the slower-than-usual first two quarters. “These are good volume growth rates,” she said.

Even if Femsa’s soft drink sales were to fizzle, the firm still has a few other lines to fall back on. Its next biggest segment: a 118-year-old brewery business, Femsa Cerveza, the second-largest Mexican brewer after Grupo Modelo.

Femsa’s flagship beer brands include Sol, Dos Equis, Tecate and Bohemia.

A third leg of Femsa’s growth trajectory comes from its fast-growing, 5,200-unit Mexican convenience-store chain, Oxxo. Company execs hope to triple its size within 10 years.

Though profit margins for convenience stores are typically slim, Oxxo serves a higher calling.

“For Femsa, it’s a distribution play because they’re selling their products in these stores,” Torres said.

Besides beer and soft drinks, those products include juices from Jugos del Valle, Mexico’s second-biggest juice company. Femsa acquired the juice firm with Coca-Cola in a 50-50 joint venture deal that closed in November.

Interest in brewers has been growing recently, fueled by speculation of consolidation on the heels of an announced U.S. joint venture between Molson Coors () and SABMiller of London.

An agreement was recently reached for brewers Carlsberg and Heineken to buy Scottish & Newcastle, maker of Foster’s, Kronenbourg and Newcastle Brown Ale, for $15.3 billion.

Talk has resurfaced that InBev formed from the 2004 merger of Belgium’s Interbrew and Brazil’s AmBev and Anheuser-Busch () are in merger talks as well. The two are the world’s biggest brewers.

Anheuser-Busch owns a 52% stake in Grupo Modelo.

“Everyone’s wondering, ‘Who’s next?’ ” Torres said. “Mexico is a strong market for beverage sales, whether soft drink or beer.”

Though Femsa’s beer business was relatively tepid in much of 2007 due in part to weak consumer sentiment, which kept prices from rising much the tide seems to be turning.

Late in 2007, and “sooner than expected,” Femsa started raising beer prices again, wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Reinaldo Santana.

Santana expects Femsa’s beer business to improve this year, in part due to better pricing and price relief in some high-cost raw materials, such as aluminum. High barley and metals prices drove up costs last year for everyone.

Torres estimates that Femsa’s beer volume in Mexico grew about 5% in the fourth quarter, about two percentage points higher than earlier in the year and more in line with historical growth rates.

The Mexican economy and consumer sentiment have improved, she says: “It’s more stable now than a year ago.”

Beer Exports

Meanwhile, Femsa is putting more marketing weight behind beer exports to the U.S., in partnership with U.S. distributor Heineken. The U.S. is Femsa’s biggest export market, though it accounts for only 8% of sales.

Mexican beer leads all other imported beers in the U.S., including rivals from the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and the U.K. But Femsa’s exports trail those of Grupo Modelo, whose Corona Extra is the top imported beer brand in the U.S.

Brazil Latin America’s biggest beer market is also on the rise for Femsa.

Femsa’s acquisition of Brazil’s troubled Kaiser brewery about two years ago gives it a growth platform in South America’s largest country. Kaiser is the third-largest brewer in Brazil, though nowhere near the size of Brazil’s leading AmBev brands.

Femsa is also pushing its own beer brands in Brazil, though the effort is still at an early stage. Torres estimates that Femsa’s beer volume in Brazil grew about 8% in 2007, mostly from Kaiser sales.

“What makes Femsa interesting is that it is diversified by products and by geography,” Torres said.

The U.S. is on sale. And in New York City, some of the price tags are marked in euros.

The number of international tourists who came to the city last year grew by 20%, to 8.5 million, according to research by consulting firm «investing.businessweek.com» for NYC & Co., the city’s official marketing and tourism organization. Many of those visitors came from Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. And no wonder, with the euro having gained about 12% against the dollar over the past 12 months. On Feb. 28, a day after Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke talked about further interest rate cuts, the dollar traded at an all-time low against the euro, $1.52 to €1. A Year-Round Shopping Spree

For many retailers in New York and other tourist destinations, the foreign influx is helping to offset the shrinking confidence of their U.S. customers. Last year, foreign tourists spent $2.9 billion shopping in New York, according to the city. “My European customers just can’t get enough in luxury stores like Louis Vuitton or Marc Jacobs, or those funky little boutiques in SoHo and the Lower East Side,” says Marla Hander, the president of Shop Gotham, a shopping service that caters to domestic and foreign tourists.

The price difference for a European is noticeable even when shopping for something as cheap as a pair of sneakers, says Celeste Rivera, a store representative at the Adidas Heritage store in the city’s trendy SoHo neighborhood. “A lot of those shoppers are from Germany,” she adds.

Foreign-speaking visitors have always crowded Manhattan’s streets during the Christmas holiday season, but now more are coming year-round. Kathy Duffy, a spokeswoman for Marriott Hotels («www.businessweek.com») of New York, notes that more foreign residents at her hotel are coming strictly for shopping, some through travel agencies that organize shopping-only tours. One such agency in Britain brings three times as many customers to New York today as it did four years ago, according to Duffy.

Although international travelers only made up of 17% of total visits to New York City, “they stay longer and spend more,” says Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC & Co. Everything Must Go!

Some retailers are even posting “Euro Accepted” signs in their windows. “Most people don’t think it’s a big deal,” says Imran Ahmed, a store manager at East Village Wine & Liquors, a small retailer on the Lower East Side. “A lot of our customers are based in New York, but many are Europeans.”

For economists, the tourism boom also drives home the broader forces at work behind the dollar’s decline. Those same forces have led to a surge in foreign investment in the U.S. Big financial houses such as Citigroup («www.businessweek.com») and Merrill Lynch («www.businessweek.com») recently raised billions from government funds in Kuwait, Singapore, Korea, and elsewhere. Foreign purchases of U.S. assets last year set a record of $405.7 billion, according to Thomson Financial («www.businessweek.com»), up 92% from $210.9 billion in 2006. The dollar’s decline is “part of a broader adjustment needed to bring the U.S.’s trade deficit down,” says Brad Setser, an international economics researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Three contenders remain in the presidential election marathon. Whoever crosses the tape in front is also expected to make winners and losers of global investors in industries like health care, defense and utilities.

There may be even more at stake.

The broad outlook for asset values could hinge on how the next president manages the economy, and on his or her policies on such matters as trade and taxation.

The outcome on Nov. 4 could present investment opportunities, market strategists say, but they also caution that it will take more than a correct forecast of the result to produce profitable buy and sell decisions.

Political and economic realities might severely limit the new presidents freedom to implement bold policy initiatives, the strategists point out, and some of the most likely changes after Inauguration Day in January are well anticipated and might already be factored into share prices.

Health care is a prime example - probably the most prime. When investment advisers go over the sectors in which shareholders stand to gain or lose depending on the result of the U.S. election, health care ranks first on just about everyones list, mainly because the Democratic and Republican candidates have put it there.

“Health care is in a class by itself and is being handled as a special sector by all the politicians,” said Komal Sri-Kumar, chief global strategist at TCW Group, a subsidiary of the French bank Sociйtй Gйnйrale.

Medical care consumes a very large proportion of spending by Americans. The Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the almost-certain Republican nominee, John McCain, have offered proposals to expand access to health care.

Clinton favors mandatory insurance coverage, although how she intends to enforce compliance is unclear. Obama and McCain have called for incentives, like subsidies or tax credits, to try to make coverage more affordable.

Clintons plan is the most ambitious, with its call for universal coverage. But it scares Sri-Kumar more than the rival programs.

For these shareholders, “Hillary would be worse than Obama, and if McCain won, I would breathe a sigh of relief because I wouldnt have to worry about what he would do,” he said.

He then conceded that he may not have to worry all that much if Clinton were to win because what she wants might far exceed what she could achieve. That was clear a decade and a half ago when she tried to restructure the health care system on behalf of her husband, President Bill Clinton, and achieved very little.

“If she is elected, she will be forced to moderate all of her plans,” Sri-Kumar said. Private companies will continue to provide medical care and insurance, and so “the market is going to be a disciplining device.”

Barry Ogden, manager of the Ivy Capital Appreciation Fund, is another who believes that Clintons bark is worse than her bite and that the same applies to Obama and McCain.

When it comes to the impact of their proposals on health care stocks, Ogden is more worried about the worry than about the policies that are implemented, and he foresees a greater threat before the election than after.

“Its not the reality of the change but fear of a major change thats going to weigh on multiples,” he predicted.

It already is.

Concern about declines in reimbursement rates for drugs bought through government programs has helped send the valuations of drug makers tumbling. Some analysts believe that share prices already account for all of the potential bad news, and maybe more.

The candidates proposals “revolve around cost containment and an attempt to get universal coverage, but most people are expecting that, so you could argue its priced in,” said Walter McCormick, lead manager of the Evergreen Fundamental Large Cap Fund.

One observer contends, however, that talk of a health care overhaul could put a fright into executives, too, especially when they think back to Clintons earlier effort, and that there may be more risk than many think.

“Hillary is known for screwing up heath care in the 90s, but she did put pressure on the health care and pharmaceutical industries to keep an eye on costs and so forth,” said Roger Ibbotson, a professor at the Yale School of Management. “That wasnt so good for shareholders, and the same thing could happen again, especially if Hillary gets in, less so if Obama gets in.”

Investment advisers disagree on how much is at stake from the outcome of the election for other sectors tied closely to key issues on which the candidates differ sharply, such as terrorism and the Iraq war.