In the 12 months to this August, São Paulo attracted almost $260m of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the financial services sector, a 26% increase on the 12 months previous and by far the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean region. Of the 13 projects the Brazilian city attracted, the largest was Spain-based insurer Mapfre’s $100m investment to develop a centralised data-processing centre, which will serve the whole of Latin America and is the company's third such centre worldwide.
Mexico, however, recorded the largest FDI project in the region, again for a data-processing hub by another Spanish financial institution. Banking group BBVA invested an estimated $143m to open two data facilities in Mexico by the second half of 2014, which will process transactions completed in the US. The investment, however, could not be pinpointed to a specific city and, as a result, the only Mexican financial centre to appear in the capital investment ranking is Mexico City, with one project of an estimated value of $42m. This is to open a new branch of Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco in the city.