Macquarie to launch Mexican infrastructure fund

Macquarie Group, the largest private manager of infrastructure assets worldwide, is in the process of creating a new unlisted infrastructure fund focused on Mexico.

Plans for the fund were disclosed in a footnote in the firm’s annual results presentation issued Friday.

The fund will be housed within Macquarie Capital, Macquarie’s investment banking division. It will be staffed out of Mexico City, where the firm opened an office earlier this year and transferred several employees from the New York office.

Macquarie also disclosed plans for an unlisted fund focusing on Russia. It is unclear, however, what the focus of the Russia fund will be. The firm has a joint venture, Macquarie Renaissance, in Moscow with Russia’s Renaissance Capital. The partnership, formed in August 2007, focuses on advisory and funds management opportunities.

The disclosures came amid an explicit statement from the firm’s management that, going forward, Macquarie Capital will “focus on growing unlisted funds under management”.

Many of its listed funds have sold off in the wake of the credit crisis as investors concerned over leverage fled to less geared investments, prompting Macquarie to write-down hundreds of millions of dollars of its co-investments in the funds.