Investment radar: Jaime Chico Pardo, Rafael Cervantes de la Teja and the patriarchs shaping concessions in Mexico

Mexico will allocate 35 billion pesos in 2025 to new projects under the National Road Infrastructure Program, according to data from the Office of the President. The figure confirms that the road concession cycle has not stalled, but its pace and direction depend on a small group of decision-makers whose careers span decades of public policy and private capital. Jaime Chico Pardo, Rafael Cervantes de la Teja, David Guillermo Miranda Herrera, and Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez Romano hold strategic positions in the Latin American infrastructure value chain. Their influence, far from nominal, translates into official resolutions, budget allocations, and regulatory filters that determine which projects advance and which stagnate.

Jaime Chico Pardo: from capital recycling to corporate governance

Jaime Chico Pardo, founder of Grupo ENESA, consolidated over the past decade a strategy of divesting operational assets that redefined his position within the Mexican business ecosystem. The sale of Laboratorios Médicos Polanco to Synlab and Selmec to Generac, documented by Manufactura and El Financiero, marked a capital recycling phase that moved ENESA away from direct operations in healthcare and energy.

In April 2025, Chico Pardo resigned from Grupo Bimbo's Board of Directors after 11 years, as reported by Bloomberg Línea based on Mexican Stock Exchange records. The departure does not represent a retirement from the corporate world but rather a reconfiguration of his involvement toward roles with less operational exposure.

It is important to distinguish Jaime Chico Pardo's career from that of his brother Fernando Chico Pardo, linked to ASUR and a protagonist of recent large-scale operations in the financial sector. Jaime has maintained a profile oriented toward governance and wealth management, with no new acquisitions recorded in infrastructure during the 2024-2026 period.

The capital recycling strategy executed by Grupo ENESA illustrates a recurring pattern among Mexican capital patriarchs: the transition from direct operations to positions of influence on boards of directors and diversified investment vehicles. For concession market participants, the relevant question is whether that recycled capital will find its way into the new wave of road and energy projects Mexico is planning for the next decade.

What role does Rafael Cervantes de la Teja play in unblocking road concessions?

Rafael Cervantes de la Teja serves as Director General of Road Development within the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transport (SICT), a technical position with direct impact on the progress of concession projects. On June 3, 2025, the Official Gazette published an agreement expanding Cervantes de la Teja's authority to carry out right-of-way clearance and regularization actions on projects eligible for concession, as reported by Revista TyT.

The resolution addresses one of the historic bottlenecks of the Mexican concession system. Right-of-way clearance has been, for decades, the single greatest source of delay in road project execution. Conflicts with ejidatarios, cadastral ambiguities, and prolonged expropriation processes have paralyzed entire sections of concession highways, driving up financial costs and discouraging private sector participation.

By expanding the authority of the Director General of Road Development, the SICT centralizes in a single figure the capacity to resolve right-of-way disputes, which could accelerate the execution of the works package planned under the 35-billion-peso budget for new road infrastructure. The Bachetón Program, focused on maintaining the toll-free federal road network with an investment of 30 billion pesos, complements this strategy by keeping the existing network operational while new concession segments are developed.

Rafael Cervantes de la Teja is the technical operator who can unblock the most persistent bottleneck in the Mexican concession system: right-of-way clearance.

How does the Mexican model connect with public investment gatekeepers in the region?

Analyzing the concession ecosystem in Latin America requires looking beyond Mexico's borders. In Peru, David Guillermo Miranda Herrera was appointed Director General of Multi-Year Investment Programming at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) in April 2025, according to El Peruano. From that position, Miranda Herrera controls the budget prioritization mechanism that determines which public investment projects receive funding.

The significance of this appointment is measured by the scale of resources at stake. Public investment in Peru reached a record execution of over 60 billion soles by the end of 2025, according to MEF data. Miranda Herrera functions as the Andean equivalent of Mexican gatekeepers: a technical official whose multi-year programming decisions shape the financial viability of concessions and public-private partnerships in transport, energy, and sanitation.

The parallel between Cervantes de la Teja's role in Mexico and Miranda Herrera's in Peru reveals a regional constant: major infrastructure capital flows depend less on presidential announcements and more on the operational capacity of mid-level technical officials who resolve concrete obstacles.

Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez Romano and the national security filter on foreign investment

On the regulatory front, Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez Romano leads from the Ministry of Economy the screening strategy for Chinese investments in infrastructure under national security criteria, as reported by El País. This function acquires strategic relevance in the context of the USMCA review scheduled for July 2026, which, according to the Ministry of Economy, will drive stricter regional content rules, limiting direct Asian investment in Mexican logistics infrastructure.

The screening mechanism constitutes a preliminary filter that conditions the shareholding structure of consortia participating in critical infrastructure tenders, from ports and industrial parks to data centers and power transmission networks. Gutiérrez Romano's position makes him a de facto arbiter of the origin of capital that can access the Mexican concession market.

Mexico expects energy investments of $248 billion between 2025 and 2035 under the new energy sovereignty model, according to the Ministry of Energy (Sener) and Bloomberg Línea. The magnitude of that figure amplifies the impact of any restriction on foreign capital: each national security filter applied by Gutiérrez Romano redefines the universe of eligible competitors for generation, transmission, and storage projects.

A power map with implications for institutional capital

The mapping of these four profiles reveals a pattern that GRI Institute members have repeatedly discussed at their regional gatherings: Latin American infrastructure is structured around individual decision nodes whose permanence, rotation, or departure tangibly alters investment conditions.

Jaime Chico Pardo represents the transition from operator-entrepreneur to governance patriarch, with available capital but no active infrastructure vehicles identified in the current cycle. Rafael Cervantes de la Teja embodies the technocrat with regulatory unblocking capacity, now reinforced by expanded authority. David Guillermo Miranda Herrera controls the budgetary key to Peruvian public investment in a record execution year. Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez Romano filters the origin of capital that can participate in the Mexican market, with the USMCA review as a catalyst for regulatory changes.

For institutional investors and concession operators, these four names are not biographical references but active variables in the risk-return equation of any infrastructure project in the region. GRI Institute will continue monitoring the evolution of these positions and their impact on Latin American capital flows.