MEXICO CITY, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Embattled bosses at Cemex are in such a hurry for 2011 to end that the first thing they did at the Mexican cement maker’s annual Investor Day in New York last week was to wish everyone a happy new year.

But the wry attempt by the team led by Chief Executive Lorenzo Zambrano to draw a line under a painful year fell flat – as did Zambrano’s efforts to convince investors the former emerging-market darling can reduce a crushing debt burden.

Shares in the company had this year already lost 63 percent of their value by the Sept. 29 meeting. They went on to fall a further 16 percent, touching a 13-year low of 3.25 pesos ($0.25) per share on the Mexican exchange on Monday.

“The market is having a fundamental disagreement with management’s outlook that’s big enough to drive a truck through,” Elizabeth Collins, an analyst at Morningstar, said of the company Zambrano’s grandfather founded in 1906.

It’s not the first time that markets have turned against Cemex, which has racked up massive debts following a series of ambitious takeovers that have come back to haunt Zambrano.

In 2008 and early 2009, the fall in the absolute value of its Mexican-listed shares in a nine-month period was more than double the decline in the last nine months.

But its shares are now worth just one-twelfth of what they were in mid-2007, when Zambrano was seen as the poster boy at the helm of one of Mexico’s most successful companies, and its U.S.-listed shares once topped more than $30.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – To have a say in what goes on in a listed Mexican firm, all shareholders need to do is be born into the right family, marry well or be the world’s richest man. Otherwise, it can be a struggle.

Mexico’s tycoons, including Carlos Slim, who topped this year’s rich list from Forbes magazine, often run companies with a separate share class that gives them and other insiders extra voting power on corporate actions.

Or they may simply hold most of the shares.

So in spite of a string of reforms to improve the way companies are managed, foreign investors are wary of corporate governance standards in the country and Mexico’s equity market struggles to attract investment.

Of the 34 companies in Mexico’s benchmark stock index, about 80 percent are mostly owned by an individual or family, including majors like baker Grupo Bimbo (BIMBOA.MX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), mining company Industrias Penoles (PENOLES.MX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), retail and financial company Grupo Elektra (ELEKTRA.MX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) as well as Slim’s empire.

“If we discover they have a history of not treating minority shareholders well, we’ll tend to avoid investing in those companies,” said Eric Anderson, head of Latin American equities for ING Investment Management.

“It does raise all the governance flags,” he said.