The light green paint smells fresh and the pictures are not yet on the walls in Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette's São Paulo office. The office is new but boss José Olympio is even newer, having arrived in February and ordered a sprucing up.
It's early days for DLJ transactions but Olympio has a stack of deals behind him from his 13 years at Garantia, Brazil's most aggressive investment bank recently sold to Credit Suisse First Boston. Most of that time was spent in corporate finance.
There was the successful defence of steelmaker Usiminas when a key shareholder, the Bozano Simonsen group, wanted to sell its stake to rival steel company Acesita. But other shareholders had first right of refusal and the defence consisted of raising funds in a month to enable them to buy the shares as well as finding a new friendly shareholder, the Camargo Correa Group.
On the equity side, Olympio is very proud of the work done for Coteminas, which began with an IPO in 1991 when annual sales were about $50 million. Since then the market capitalization has increased as much as tenfold, making Coteminas one of Latin America's largest textiles firms.