Jair Ribeiro met future partner Gianpaulo Baglioni when they worked on opposite sides of a deal. Ribeiro was the young, Berkeley-trained lawyer acting for the buyer. Baglioni was the experienced corporate executive, then the president of Cica, the food-processing company being bought.
They may have been at different ends of the table but through six months of arguments and negotiations the two men gained each other's mutual respect. The deal went through and Ribeiro left his law firm to join the buyer, the Italian conglomerate Ferruzzi. Baglioni, and stayed around to see an orderly handover before leaving to set up a consulting firm.
Only two years later in 1988 the two men were back together forming the investment bank Patrimônio with an operating agreement with Salomon Brothers. In 1991 the two parties bought a broker dealer which was turned into an investment bank in 1994.
One of Patrimônio's greatest corporate finance deals was Brazil's first ADR for Aracruz Celulose in 1992. Salomon was the global manager, Patrimônio and Bradesco were the Brazilian managers. "It was the first bookbuilding done in Brazil that had both local and international tranches and we had to create greenshoe mechanisms at a time when no-one at the Brazilian securities commission had heard of a greeshoe."