Trading Floor to Banking Empire: BTG’s Rise Rocks Brazil Finance

(Bloomberg) – Roberto Sallouti really means that Brazil’s Banco BTG Pactual Sa has diversified the income.

Ten years ago, when he was taken over as the Chairman of the Sallouti Executive Committee, sales and trade formed most of the revenue of the CTG and corporate credit, asset and asset management are much smaller strips of the balance sheet.

Now, lending alone is a 7.6 billion real ($ 1.4 billion) business that exceeded sales and trade for the first time last year. The bank’s assets grew by more than five times, and the reserve under the administration has increased by more than two floors – the couple together constitutes almost a quarter of the total income of the bank.

S Sallouti said at the headquarters of Sao Paulo on August 18 at the Faria Lima Boulevard in the Brazilian Wall Street, “We started with trade, added sales and went to one of the world’s investment banks from a few digital universal banks in the world.”

“We are rewarded because now we have more stable income,” he said.

A purchasing craze helped the bank to expand the customer base, increase its reserve and asset management business, and re -manage the global ambitions that are waiting. The BTG also established a unionized credit business from scratch and trained a large investment consultant network to enter Latin America’s growing middle class.

Stubborn high interest rates in Brazil and on the basis of lower economic growth. Now the prominent success of the bank analysts are wondering how long the explosion can take. Stocks increased by about 70% this year, more than other large banks in Latin America, and the latest stock return fell by 27% in the second quarter.

“BTG has been a great investment in recent years, Mur said Murilo Arruda, the founding partner of SAO Paulo -based Özkaynak Fund Mora. Now, it is difficult to know, “which rabbit will pull out of a hat to protect the current profitability levels.”

In July, the CTG agreed to buy HSBC Holdings PLC’s operations in Uruguay for 175 million dollars and contributed to the Bank’s durability in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. He is also looking for a banking license in Peru and purchased businesses outside Latin America: Fıst Privatbank in Luxembourg; and New York -based bile bench.

In Miami, he acquired a multi -family office Greytown Advisors Inc. and added $ 1 billion dollars under management and expertise with ultra -net value customers in Central America.

Sallouti said BTG plans to continue to invest in technology in new banks and expand its presence in Mexico and Argentina. He wanted to indicate that the revenue from the latest investments has not yet appeared in the balance sheet of BTG.

BTG, which is closer to the house, is known as the assumed buyer for many banking assets from developing asset management enterprises to troubled assets.

In March, he closed the purchase of Julius Baer Group’s unit in Brazil, and a month later, Rio de Janeiro -based Hedge Fund made an agreement for the Asset Management Unit of JGP Asset Management. Later in May, when Banco Master SA agreed to receive approximately 1.5 billion Reais in assets, he made headlines and gave the problematic lent liquidity that was very needed.

“Our acquisitions aim to win a scale or enter new geographies in a job with a new priority to diversify income or fill a product gap, Sall Sallouti said. “We make these purchases with the same spartan discipline that we use in the bank in general and focus on the equity return.”

Purchases also mean that the BTG has attracted the crop of new senior partners after the purchase of companies, probably revived by the bank’s profitable partnership model.

BTG Asset Management CEO – Rubens Henriques – BTG was the founding partner of Clave Capital, which he bought in 2024. Other new partners include Brazil, Fernando Vallada, former CEO of Julius Baer and former President of Greytown Marcello Correa.

When the BTG calls a partner, BTG lends money to buy shares of book value, and the annual interest rate depends on the criterion of Brazil – currently 15%. The partners are gaining a difference between the criterion rate and the 27.1% of the CTG in the second quarter. Partners pay their loans with bonus and dividend.

Sallouti said that the partnership, which has two -thirds of the BTG, helped the bank to remain agile.

“We can make very fast decisions; we don’t have to pass too much committee to decide where to place our capital,” he said.

BTG also starts new businesses from scratch. In 2022, he hired the veteran Ernesto Meyer to build a union of union credit unit to build service companies. Earlier this year, the Bank made its biggest agreement so far: a $ 2 billion syndicated bridge loan Colombia’s Grupo Nutresa sa.

In general, the loans given to small and medium -sized companies reached 28.7 billion Reais in June 2025, and a 22% increase in the same period of the previous year and helped to raise the bank to approximately 267.6 billion Reais, including guarantees and other financial instruments.

The BTG also holds more loans to individuals in the balance sheet and tries to reduce income customers through Banco Pan SA, which he bought a control with a control in 2021.

At least one analyst sees potential risks in his expanding credit book.

Malek Zein, an analyst in eleven financial research, said, “There are tons of money in Brazil to win with medium -sized companies, which pays higher spread to banks, but there are more risk and guilt rates,” he said.

He is currently said that Brazil is careful with interest rates at multi -year high interest rates and focus on supply chain financing using collateral from large companies to lend to Sallouti and smaller suppliers.

Another profitable initiative lasted longer. In 2016, BTG launched a digital retail platform to offer individuals such as bonds, stocks, derivatives and even sophisticated funds.

Competitor XP Inc. BTG, which uses the same model, created a third -party independent investment consultants network; In some cases, he spends millions of spending to buy independent companies working with XP.

This business has reached 170 of the third -party companies working with the bank in Brazil for investment consultants. BTG has more than 2 trillion Reais under management and management in reserve and asset management enterprises, and it also includes assets that are roughly detained with the numbers of XP. Although the two companies have a similar market value in 2021, the CTG is now almost four times the size of the XP size.

The bank also provides credit cards, insurance and payment services to individuals and companies.

For a long time, Andre Esteves, BTG’s founder and biggest shareholder, was joking that BTG was ‘better than Goldman’. (Actually, ‘Banking and Trade Group’.) A few years ago, he changed his melody: the new ambition would be greater than the Brazilian giant Itau, who was sitting on the world of Latin American banking in the world of 3 trillion Reais in assets.

There is still a way for the BTG to achieve its goals, but earlier this year, Banco Bradesco SA and Banco Do Brasil SA took a big step in the right direction to become the second largest Latin American Bank compared to the market value.

“BTG has gone through an important and surprising transformation for the last three, four years,” said Thiago Batista, Chairman of the Stock Research at the UBS BB Investment Bank. “It is surprising to see how agile they can adapt to the new macroeconomic facts,” he said.

It was difficult to imagine the transformation in 2015. In November, Esteves was arrested as part of a corruption investigation that swallowed companies in Brazil.

When he returned five months later, BTG was a shadow of the bank he had left behind: asset sales and business cuts ran to take the bank up after customer salvation; And the stocks had lost more than one -third of their values. Esteves was later cleared of any injustice and took back the role of the President in 2022.

Despite the latest success, BTG’s financial statements disappointed some observers who worried that the bank’s lack of transparency around certain metrics did not fully comply with the global ambitions.

“You don’t know exactly what happened in sales and trade business, Mora, who thinks that if he explains more detailed details about the operations of the BTG, he can attract more investors.

In the meantime, the analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Like 11 of the 15 analysts covering the stock – they receive a “purchase” note on stocks, but describes the effectiveness of Brazilian GDP and the effectiveness of limited capital markets as potential threats to continue the income increase.

For the time being, SALOUTI’nin BTG can provide at least 24% equity this year, and the next, US President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff in some Brazilian imports is likely to hold the wolves out of the door.

“Geopolitical situations and tariffs create a lot of market volatility, and this is a fact that will continue for the next three years, Sall said Sallouti. “It won’t change, right? So work with him!”

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