São Paulo and Santiago may seem unlikely rivals for position of Latin America's investment management hub. After all, Brazil has a meaty $1000bn mutual fund management industry and a 190 million-strong population, whereas Chile has a respective $33bn and 17 million people. Moreover, São Paulo was the top ranking Latin American international finance centre in The Banker's 2012 survey on asset management centres. But strangely, while Brazil is just waking up to its enormous potential, Santiago’s fund managers have been honing their skills for years.
The Chileans are capitalising on their experience to market themselves as the Luxembourg of Latin America: safer, more open and more experienced than their main rival. Brazil, meanwhile, is witnessing a startlingly fast if not chaotic transition from a sleepy fixed-income market to one where dynamic and international-thinking boutiques are starting to set the pace across multiple asset classes.
