While the main story of the 2022 Latin America awards is the emergence of BTG Pactual as a retail force, the bank’s senior management team, headed by chief executive Roberto Sallouti, clearly hasn’t let the investment banking team take its eye off the ball.
BTG’s growth in investment banking helped secure the firm’s leadership in M&A across the region, with 68 transactions in total. Active deal flow in its home market of Brazil undoubtedly helped as it did in enabling the bank to claim second place in the regional equity capital markets league table. BTG Pactual is, therefore, Latin America’s best bank for advisory.
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While BTG’s growing market share in Chile and Colombia bodes well for the future, it’s still very much the home advantage that helped generate the $38.5 billion in M&A deal volume, according to Dealogic.
Some of these Brazilian deals were very large and transformational, such as Hapvida’s R$54 billion ($10.6 billion) merger with GNDI; GPA’s R$19 billion spin-off of Assai Atacadista; B2W’s R$6.2 billion merger with Lojas Americanas; and Actis’s sale of its 100% stake in Echoenergia to Equatorial for R$9.6 billion.
BTG Pactual was also very active as an adviser on ECM deals, chalking up 53 transactions worth a total of $4 billion, according to Dealogic. Again, the bank’s Brazilian bias is clear, although deals such as the $628 million trade for Itaú in Chile were a notable exception.