Egis, Arzentia Capital and the new players reshaping Mexico's infrastructure

Mexico's infrastructure market is at an inflection point. The combination of the 2026-2030 Infrastructure Plan, valued at 5.6 trillion pesos, with the reconfiguration of supply chains driven by nearshoring, has created an ecosystem where traditional incumbents are no longer the sole protagonists. A new generation of private equity funds, global engineering consultancies and international family offices is entering the market with differentiated strategies, distinct capital structures and risk appetites that challenge the conventional logic of major concession operators.

What matters is not just that new players are arriving, but the questions their presence raises: what exactly are they looking for?, how do they compete with established operators? and what risks does this diversification of capital introduce to the ecosystem?

At GRI Institute, where direct interaction with infrastructure leaders across Latin America provides access to perspectives not found in mainstream media, the entry of these players has been a recurring topic at community meetings in recent months. This analysis seeks to consolidate what is known, what is suspected and what should be monitored.

Who are the new international players betting on Mexican infrastructure?

The landscape can be divided into three categories: international engineering firms with local acquisition strategies, private capital with family office logic, and players whose positioning in Mexico remains unclear.

Egis: global engineering with local roots

Egis, the French engineering and mobility services group, represents the most classic model of entry into the Mexican market: the acquisition of an established local operator. Its purchase of OCACSA — an operator with decades of experience in highway concessions in Mexico — gave it not only physical assets but something far harder to replicate: institutional relationships, regulatory knowledge and a portfolio of active contracts.

Egis's strategy in Mexico is not an isolated move. It is part of a global expansion by the group into markets where transport infrastructure requires modernization and where public-private partnership schemes offer predictable cash flows. Mexico, with its need to expand and maintain a road network connecting nearshoring industrial corridors, fits perfectly into that investment thesis.

What sets Egis apart from other entrants is its verticality: it does not just invest — it operates, designs and manages. This vertical integration allows it to capture value across multiple links of the chain, from engineering consultancy to toll operations. For local competitors, this represents a considerable challenge: competing against a player that can offer integrated solutions at a lower marginal cost.

Arzentia Capital: private capital with a wealth management logic

Arzentia Capital operates from a fundamentally different logic. As an investment vehicle linked to wealth management and the family office model, its time horizon and success metrics differ from those of traditional infrastructure funds. Where an institutional fund seeks risk-adjusted returns within defined timeframes — typically between seven and twelve years — a family office can afford greater patience and less distribution pressure.

This structural difference has practical implications for the market. Arzentia Capital and similar players can participate in projects where cash flow generation takes longer to materialize, such as social infrastructure or transport projects in early development stages. They can also accept minority positions in co-investments where institutional funds would demand control.

The market's growing interest in understanding Arzentia Capital's structure and strategy reflects a broader trend: the professionalization of Latin American family capital in infrastructure. This is no longer about passive real estate investments, but about active positions in infrastructure assets with complex regulatory components.

Emefin and the market's blurred signals

The case of Emefin deserves particular mention for what it reveals about the sector's information dynamics. Emefin is a Peruvian family office linked to the Mulder Group, historically focused on the retail sector in Europe and Latin America. Its appearance in searches related to Mexican infrastructure may reflect exploratory movements not yet public, market confusion, or simply the curiosity of investors tracking Latin American capital flows across sectors.

What is significant is not Emefin itself, but what its presence on the market's radar indicates: there is unmet demand for strategic intelligence on who is moving capital into Mexican infrastructure. Investors, competitors and potential partners seek consolidated information and cannot find it. This information gap is, in itself, a relevant data point about the ecosystem's maturity.

A necessary warning: the Tamayo Capital case

Not all emerging players deserve the same analytical treatment. Tamayo Capital, which presented itself as a real estate investment fund, has been embroiled since 2025 in a serious fraud scandal, with executives who are fugitives from justice. The case serves as a reminder that the proliferation of investment vehicles in infrastructure and real estate — particularly those with opaque ownership structures — demands rigorous due diligence from co-investors, partners and regulators.

The market's demand to know the ownership structure and true controllers of these funds is not idle curiosity: it is basic risk management.

How do these players compete with traditional operators and what does it mean for the market?

The entry of non-traditional players alters the market's competitive dynamics in at least three dimensions.

First, in capital structuring. Family offices and wealth-based funds introduce flexibility into project financing structures. They can provide patient equity that complements bank debt and capital market instruments, expanding the universe of viable projects.

Second, in capability transfer. Players like Egis bring engineering standards, asset management technology and operational experience from developed markets. This raises the bar for local operators but also creates opportunities for learning and co-investment.

Third, in ecosystem governance. The diversification of players demands more sophisticated regulatory frameworks for public-private partnership schemes, greater transparency in the ownership structures of investment vehicles and dispute resolution mechanisms adapted to the complexity of transactions.

The 2026-2030 Infrastructure Plan, with its 5.6 trillion pesos in projected investment, will be the ultimate proving ground for these dynamics. The scale of the opportunity is sufficient to accommodate multiple players, but competition for the most attractive projects — those with a clear regulatory framework, proven demand and a reliable government counterpart — will be intense.

What should the infrastructure ecosystem watch for amid this reconfiguration?

Three elements deserve strategic attention in the coming quarters.

The first is institutional capacity to manage the diversity of players. Bidding and regulatory entities will need to adapt their processes to counterparts with very different profiles: from listed global corporations to family offices with more concentrated governance structures.

The second is the ecosystem's reputational risk. Cases like Tamayo Capital erode the confidence of international institutional investors in the Mexican market. Sector self-regulation, complemented by institutional due diligence, is essential to protect the ecosystem's credibility.

The third is the need for quality market intelligence. The gap between market interest in these players and the availability of strategic analysis on them is striking. Whoever manages to close that gap — with verified information, access to primary sources and regulatory context — will generate significant value for the investment community.

In that regard, the GRI Institute network, with its direct access to infrastructure leaders in Mexico and Latin America, constitutes a privileged platform for producing and distributing such intelligence. GRI's infrastructure community meetings already incorporate discussions on the entry of new players, the evolution of blended investment schemes and the specific opportunities of the 2026-2030 Infrastructure Plan.

Conclusion: a market growing in complexity demands more sophisticated analysis

Mexican infrastructure is no longer the exclusive territory of large national construction firms and pension funds. The entry of players like Egis — with its acquisition and vertical integration model —, Arzentia Capital — with its patient wealth capital logic — and other international players at various stages of positioning creates a more competitive, more diverse and, inevitably, more complex market.

That complexity is not a problem: it is a sign of maturation. But it requires all ecosystem participants — government, investors, operators and advisors — to raise their level of analysis, diligence and strategic sophistication. The 5.6 trillion pesos of the 2026-2030 Infrastructure Plan will not be allocated to those who arrive first, but to those who best understand the rules of the game and the power dynamics that shape them.

The map of players is being redrawn. Knowing it with precision is not an academic luxury: it is a competitive advantage.