Barclays, BlackRock and Deutsche Bank are vying to tap as much as $9.3 billion in Mexican regulated pension assets that are poised to invest in commodities following regulatory changes.
Mexican pension funds, the nation’s largest institutional investors with 1.57 trillion pesos ($123.5 billion) in assets, are allowed starting this year to invest as much as 10% of assets in commodities. The funds, known as Afores, had allocated most of their holdings to Mexican debt markets.
“We’ve seen globally a great deal of interest in this phase” when pension funds start to invest in commodities, Philippe J.J. Comer, head of commodity structuring for Barclays Capital, said in an interview. Mexico’s pension assets are important for commodity money managers because they’re “going to grow quite significantly.”
According to regulations published Dec. 7, pension funds may invest 5% to 10% of some of their portfolios in commodity-linked securities and use a larger percentage of assets to buy stocks, under the revised rules.
Mexican pension funds have been wooed by firms such as Barclays, BlackRock and Schroders to manage some of their assets, said Sergio Mendez, who manages 200 billion pesos as portfolio manager at Afore XXI Banorte.
Spokesmen for Deutsche Bank, BlackRock and Schroders didn’t respond to requests for comments by Bloomberg News.
