Latin America and Caribbean
LATEST ARTICLES
-
Having taken a hammering following Mexico’s election results and the Brazilian president's comments on fiscal consolidation, the prospects for the key Latin American currencies over the remainder of 2024 are unclear.
-
Investing in Latin America’s payment fintechs is having a moment – but will the region’s central banks kill off their revenue model by adopting their own version of Brazil’s PIX?
-
Falling inflation has sparked an early surge in credit demand, which offers the prospect of banking normalization – a potential boon given the negative real interest rates banks are earning on their government securities portfolios.
-
New transition bond includes step-down, as new ‘green infrastructure’ bond issued.
-
The bank's new CEO has posted his first market-beating quarterly results, but the firm's exposure to lower-income segments could limit longer-term upside.
-
A report from Citi asks if Mexican banks must increase interest rates on their deposit base.
-
Huge international debt capital market issuance in September and October is forecast as investors may seek to take any US Treasury benefit through wider spreads.
-
CEO Leandro Miranda tells Euromoney that the firm will use recently granted CVM license and secured deal mandates to raise equity.
-
The region’s tough economic history, coupled with its strength in soft and hard commodities, makes it best positioned to tackle today’s challenges.
-
Mexican banks have sold off hard since Claudia Sheinbaum – as widely expected – was confirmed as the country’s next president.
-
Though HSBC retrenched from other Latin American markets, it stayed in Mexico, and country chief Jorge Arce says that the bank is well-positioned to take advantage of the nation’s unique blend of structural growth drivers.
-
The bank is looking to capitalise on its local presence in Latin America as Korean and Chinese firms intensify their nearshoring efforts.
-
Unlike other firms in Latin America, BTG Pactual hides its growing retail digital banking business within its wealth-management division. Why?
-
-
New accounts targeted at low-income customers reflects the reality of intense competition in the sector.
-
The Brazilian neobank is growing its number of clients faster than perhaps any financial institution on earth. Combine this with static unit costs and the operational leverage potential is big. CFO Guilherme Lago explains how its business model is now focused on the next five to 10 years as open banking generates unprecedented price transparency, customer portability and opportunity.
-
Does Banco Galicia’s acquisition of HSBC Argentina validate president Javier Milei or weaken him?
-
XP has succeeded in Brazil by using its technological efficiencies to win on digital experience and price. But now the incumbents are catching up and XP chief executive Thiago Maffra is focusing on developing service beyond pure online delivery.
-
President Javier Milei campaigned on cuts – and that is what he has delivered. But like all extreme diets, the approach is unsustainable. Time to rethink the plan.
-
The paradox of Itaú is that it has maintained its leadership of Brazil’s banking sector with an ease and assuredness in recent years that belies the radical and continual transformation going on under the surface. The bank’s CFO, Alexsandro Broedel, tells Euromoney that its management’s only real constant is to view every new player as an existential threat – and react accordingly.
-
Reports that the long-rumoured deal has been agreed suggest growing optimism among Argentine bankers about the new administration.
-
The leading neobanks in Brazil seem to have hit their stride in terms of profitability just as some of the traditional banks have stumbled. Are these firms the future of Brazilian banking?
-
The Brazilian government’s changes to the laws governing its tax-exempt debentures have allayed financial market fears that president Lula intends to rely on BNDES to fund billions spending on infrastructure, crowding out private-sector finance.
-
Chief executive Carlos Eduardo Guimarães says that he expects the bank’s return on equity to double to between 20% and 22% in the next two years.
-
Banco Inter reported return on equity of 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023 but is now targeting a return on equity of 30% by 2028, CFO Santiago Stel tells Euromoney.
-
Domestic companies launch banking-as-a-service models as the country's central bank creates space for new entrants.
-
A recent rule change means that Brazilian banks will be able to use tax credits related to provision expenses sooner – and the impact could be material.
-
Internal and external reforms are under way as the new president signals a break with the previous administration.
-
It is not hard to find short-term worries over global markets’ state of readiness for the US’s transition to one-day settlement in late May. But even if the UK, Europe and those Asian markets still using two-day settlement can adapt to the shift in the longer term, they will also face intense pressure to lessen their dislocation from the US cycle by copying its move. Many also fear the ultimate end-game of same-day or even instant settlement.
-
Brazil’s banks have been talking a good game about capturing the outperformance of smaller, privately held companies in the country. Now a new banking advisory firm – packed with senior bankers – has made this segment its entire business strategy.
-
New entrants spur breadth and depth in the country’s capital markets.
-
A team of once-public sector bankers and officials is launching a new private equity fund that aims to identify ‘climate winners’ from the transition to a decarbonized economy. It has identified key industries but its central thesis is regulation.
-
The cost to the government of supporting the Mexican oil firm’s debt could rise to 1.5% of GDP in 2025. Could it walk away?
-
BR Partners grew steadily up until its successful IPO in 2021. However, tougher markets since that float have led to a period of relative consolidation. Will 2024 see a resumption of chief executive Ricardo Lacerda’s ambitious empire building?
-
The appointment of Marcelo Noronha as chief executive of Bradesco should probably have taken place five years ago. Is he still the right man for the job?
-
The bank must broaden its horizons if performance is to improve.
-
The sovereign pushed hard on its first use-of-proceeds green bond, but a sustainability-linked bond was not seen as a practical option for now.
-
Markets jump on the news that Javier Milei will be Argentina’s next president. A large devaluation is needed, but that leads to the risk of deposit flight.
-
Sector shows strong profit performance in the third quarter as asset quality improves.
-
As Citi presses on with its consumer-banking exits around the world, the job of defining what its international network now represents falls to its newly appointed head of international, Ernesto Torres Cantú.
-
Private banking clients have begun exploring alternative asset allocation strategies in Brazil. Euromoney talks to the founders of a startup that is tapping into this demand with a strategy focused on special situations.
-
High interest-rate regulations skew credit portfolio allocation and stifle new entrants to the sector, but the new president may have other challenges to solve first.
-
Latin America has been a relative backwater for private equity firms. Could better equity market conditions in the region drive an uptick in activity?
-
Record sustainable finance issuance will still only get you so far.
-
Digital banks look to online games to help drive retention.
-
It is rare that a popular, fast-growing and secure financial product is put at risk, but could the boom in FGTS loans in Brazil be under existential threat?
-
If you owe the IMF $3.6 billion, it’s your problem. But if you owe the IMF $36 billion, it is their problem.
-
Deutsche Bank’s Mexico team says the country is vital for Latin American credibility and that nearshoring will drive FDI in the coming decade.
-
Latin American issuance was solid, if unspectacular in the first half of this year. However, with politics, sticker price resistance and refinancing needs skewed to 2024, the next half may be more difficult.
-
Patricio Sepúlveda, head of Chile’s public debt office, discusses how programmatic issuance demonstrates commitment to sustainability-linked bond goals and can make these structures more cost effective.
-
The frontrunner in the Argentine presidential election campaign has said he wants to abolish the peso and replace it with the US dollar. Is it blue-sky thinking or just greenback dreaming?
-
Private bankers are eyeing PE and venture capital investments as digital platforms emerge in Brazil, but personal advisory remains critical.
-
The Brazilian bank is focused on new initiatives aimed at boosting active-user rates, including a new global app and buy-now-pay-later product.
-
Second-quarter results from Brazil’s largest banks, published over the first half of August, revealed a bounce in financial performance. But it may be premature to dismiss further asset-quality deterioration down the line.
-
Trade and currency wars have boosted Brazil’s agribusiness sector in the past couple of years. Higher prices for soft commodities have, however, accelerated a trend that has been noticeable for many years: the country’s inward focus.
-
-
The country’s economy was already weak before a serious drought hit. Now it is broke, and the question in Buenos Aires isn’t whether finance minister Sergio Massa can muddle through to the presidential election at the end of October, it is whether he can make it to the primaries in August before a full-blown financial crisis.
-
The evolution of Brazil’s central bank payments programme could be good news for banks.
-
UBS’s acquisition of Credit Suisse will further reduce the number of large international private banks in Brazil. Julius Baer has been quick to take advantage of this.
-
The country’s banking system seems as solid as ever, but its banks are seeing an uptick in delinquencies that could spin out of control.
-
The echoes of 2014 have been loud in Brazil’s private banking industry over the past 12 months. A precipitous fall in interest rates – followed by a meteoric rise – has left the market completely the same but also very different.
-
When the news broke that Argentina was thinking of merging its currency with that of its neighbour, Brazil, my immediate question was: which Argentine peso?
-
The bank’s chief financial officer says Inter is moving into an expansion phase, following an ambitious and aspirational ‘north star’.
-
-
The bank’s new head must withstand political pressure to extend subsidized credit and lower underwriting standards.
-
A persuasive case can be made for nearshoring, but so far in Latin America there has been little direct evidence that it is happening. In Mexico, things are about to change.
-
Nearshoring has been seen to drive credit growth among the country’s smaller regional banks.
-
The region’s advantage is likely to be short-lived and could fade by 2024, according to JPMorgan's private bank head.
-
Local flows to fixed income and equity redemptions limit ECM liquidity.
-
Restrictions on redundancies force out larger banks in Mexico from bidding for business.
-
Uruguay reignites the debate on transition finance with its sovereign sustainability-linked bond.
-
The bank is focusing on organic growth by acquiring retail clients and launching a private bank.
-
Proactive risk tightening in 2021 sees surging return on equity as scale brings operational leverage.
-
The market reaction to the third-quarter results from Brazil’s second-largest private bank has revealed investor sensitivity to banks’ deteriorating asset quality.
-
Bank’s ESG head urges competitors and regulators to respond more quickly to emissions accounting challenge.
-
While fintechs have been thriving in Brazil and throughout Latin America, the region’s local stock exchanges have failed to attract IPOs.
-
Brazil’s agribusiness sector is booming on the back of sky-high commodity prices. The public banks that have long financed the sector now face a wave of new private-sector competitors.
-
The Brazilian world of digital banks has it all: billionaire unicorns, sub-brands created by the incumbents and completely new disruptors. But one player has been quietly growing under the radar to become the country’s second-largest digital player.
-
The new administration is expected to be less receptive to bank privatization as the result boosts ‘Lula portfolio’ stocks.
-
The market for remittances is expected to grow by almost 10% in 2022, driven by diaspora-linked savings.
-
If Lula wins in Brazil, he is unlikely to focus on the strength of the private-sector banks because fintechs are doing that for him already.
-
New deal adds two-year payment deferral to existing natural-disaster clause to mitigate impact of a future pandemic.
-
While the impact on energy is centre stage, the war in Ukraine is also wreaking havoc on soft commodity prices and trade routes. Trade in agricultural commodities is taking a hit. The pool of banks financing these commodities is already dwindling, while the risks for those that remain are growing.
-
Europe and the US remain the focus, but LatAm and Asia Pacific will also contribute to volatility in 2022.
-
In its latest funding round, Brazilian-based Creditas proved that valuations for the stronger fintechs can buck the falling trend seen among the large, publicly listed startups.
-
Banco do Brasil’s outstanding second quarter means that scrutiny will intensify at its domestic rival.
-
Argentina faces yet another financial crisis and has brought in a new ‘super-minister’ to try to calm the market and placate the IMF. While he will find a sympathetic ear at the fund, not many other international investors are listening anymore.
-
The US bank has reorganized its Latam wealth management business to focus on faster growing countries, but home bias remains a tough instinct to overcome.
-
Will higher rates today come at the price of more pain tomorrow?
-
Campaigning for October’s presidential election has yet to officially start in Brazil, but it is expected to be bitter – and the risks of political fall out for Brazilian banks have already become all too clear.
-
Despite some notable challenges, Latin American currencies could continue to surprise in the second half of the year.
-
Latin America’s corporates are embracing sustainable local debt financing with enthusiasm. The region’s bankers are betting that it’s going to be as good for bookrunner fees as it promises to be for the environment.
-
Eric Cardozo, co-founding partner, COO and CFO of Brazilian private banking boutique WHG, talks to Euromoney about quitting a mainstream firm in 2020 and why more private bankers in the country seem to be following suit.
-
Asset quality is under threat across the region, but particularly in Peru.
-
Demographics and technology are creating new markets for financial services in population segments long ignored by traditional banks. The region is seeing a feeding frenzy in fintech startups – and the banks are responding with a new strategy: get ready to meet ‘co-opetition’.
-
The pressure for a short-term boost to ROE might force Bradesco to re-evaluate its insurance portfolio.
-
Plans to incentivize foreign capital aim to boost capacity, with a new internal ‘investment bank’ to drive growing pipeline.
-
This year, many Latin American debt issuers eschewed the traditional practice of issuing in January, believing the expensive market would move in their favour. That reading now looks like a bad one.
-
A combination of geographical position and commodity strength is working in the country’s favour.
-
The war in Ukraine has further highlighted the benefits of Banco Santander’s diversification across Europe and the Americas, according to executive chairman Ana Botín. However, its European home market may be a big disadvantage in Citi’s looming auction of Mexican lender Banamex.
-
The rule change will be phased in, but shares in publicly listed fintechs dip.
-
-
After the 2020 sale of its US bank, BBVA’s global ambitions in retail are alive and well. It has entered Brazil with digital bank Neon, ploughed more capital into UK app-based lender Atom Bank and launched in Italy in a way that presages branchless growth across the eurozone.
-
Vaca muerta is an enormous oil and gas field, but it may be too late to exploit it.
-
The first sovereign sustainability-linked bond has been announced, and it is no surprise that it is coming from Latin America. Investors and bankers will follow Chile’s transaction carefully, but is the issuer’s decision to enter war-spooked markets a sign of confidence or recklessness?
-
Beny Podlubny, head of XP Private, talks to Euromoney about the metaverse, risk appetite, international expansion and why Brazilian clients like to keep things close to home.
-
Itaú’s Argentinian firm is its smallest. Nevertheless, innovation in its retail segment could be a game-changer in the country – and potentially the region.
-
-
The rationale behind a bank buyback can be different in emerging versus developed markets.
-
The chance to acquire Citi’s Mexican business could attract some unexpected bidders.
-
Citi’s decision to withdraw from consumer banking in Mexico demonstrates the extent to which fintech players have transformed this market. How prepared are the other incumbents to take on the competition?
-
Having closed its onshore private wealth businesses in Brazil and Mexico, the US firm had a standout year in its Latin American private bank in 2021.
-
The decision to sell Citibanamex ends the ‘Mexican exception’.
-
It took all of six days of the new year before the tone was set: XP Inc’s announcement of its acquisition of Banco Modal. The deal will need regulatory approval, but is being warmly endorsed by the target’s management and its minority shareholder, Credit Suisse.
-
German lender renews focus on LatAm after 2015 withdrawal.
-
The momentum behind the loss-making bank’s IPO had become unstoppable by year-end, even as the range was eventually cut. It now faces intense scrutiny as a public firm.
-
The CEO and CFO aren’t about to abandon the physical in the chase for digital business.
-
At the end of each year, Euromoney takes a close look at the performance of 25 key institutions that we cover. Speaking to senior executives at these firms, we assess what went right and what didn’t, together with what might lie ahead. This year, we have also examined the views of those at the top on two important factors for 2022: their own and others’ asset quality, and the disruptive threat of China. Their observations are discussed in the two features below, followed by our reports for 2021 on the Euromoney 25.
-
Rebooting the financial system with a new currency could be what’s needed to give Argentina’s economy a way forward.
-
The recent appearance of a golden bull outside the São Paulo's B3 stock exchange was something of a red rag to the city’s populace.