Brazil's Biggest Asset Management Firms Prepare for Wave of Foreign Investment Brazil's money managers have more to celebrate these days than just being part of one of the world's best-performing economies. On April 30, Standard & Poor's upgraded the nation's long-term foreign currency debt to investment grade. The change is of particular importance to institutional investors that are not allowed to invest in an emerging-markets country’s bonds if they are not investment grade, according to José Brazuna, general manager of the asset management division at the National Association of Investment Banks, a São Paulo–based trade organization.
"We will have a lot of foreign pension funds that will come to Brazil to invest," agrees Ricardo Mizukawa, a product management specialist at Bradesco Asset Management in São Paulo. "That will be a big change."
Money managers are also hoping the credit rating upgrade will spur investors to choose equities over fixed-income instruments, which have been more popular owing to the country's high interest rates; the benchmark Selic interest rate currently stands at 11.75 percent but had reached 19.75 percent as recently as 2005.
How the Ranking Was Compiled Institutional Investor's inaugural ranking identifies Brazil's top 20 fund managers by assets. New York–based Associate Editor Timothy Roberts and São Paulo–based Researcher Milena Mazzola Moreti compiled the ranking from questionnaires filled out by the institutions themselves. II refined this data through follow-up faxes, e-mails and telephone calls. All figures are in millions of dollars and are as of September 30, 2007. Figures were converted from reais to dollars using the September 30, 2007, exchange rate.