Itau, JPMorgan Hunt for Bond Talent in Latin American Debt Boom
Itau, JPMorgan Hunt for Bond Talent in Latin American Debt Boom
(Bloomberg) -- Brazilian banks are beefing up their fixed-income departments, hanging up “Now Hiring” signs amid a rebound in debt sales across Latin America.
Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Santander SA, Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among the lenders vying for talent to structure debt deals as the region’s borrowers take advantage of low interest rates. Local bond sales are poised to hit a record in Brazil in 2019, while banks are gearing up for an increase in mergers and acquisitions and new investments next year that will fuel more sales.
As the banks compete to hire new talent, they’re also poaching from rivals and rebuilding their ranks after departures.
Banco Santander is building its operation and seeking to replace Marcos Andia who left the Brazilian unit of the Spanish bank where he was the executive director of debt capital markets. He had arrived in April from Banco ABC Brasil, quit in September and plans to start in a similar position at another bank, according to people familiar with his job move. A Santander executive said the bank will seek to continue to have the most workers dedicated to debt capital markets in Brazil. Santander’s press office didn’t reply to requests for comment.
JPMorgan’s Brazil unit is adding bankers and searching for a replacement for Pedro Campos, a vice president who recently joined the debt capital markets team at Bank of America. Campos will be based in Sao Paulo where he will work on international bond origination and report to Maxim Volkov at Bank of America in New York. A representative for JPMorgan declined to comment.
Itau Unibanco, Banco Bradesco SA and Banco Safra SA, some of the region’s largest banks, are also seeking new hires for their fixed-income departments, said people familiar with the job searches, who asked not to be identified as the plans aren’t public.
Itau, Latin America’s biggest bank by market capitalization, has hired Thiago Munhoz as its fixed income director and recently brought on Thales Gaspar to work in its secondary-market fixed income and sales trading department, people familiar with the hires said. Munhoz had spent seven years at Banco Bradesco and Gaspar was at Banco Santander for almost nine years, including the last six as its head credit trader.
The Sao Paulo-based bank forecasts an increase in financing projects that will require people with experience in structuring deals. The bank has a few hundred mandates for mergers and acquisitions, including 30 worth more than $500 million. Those deals, which are both domestic and international, will need special financing structures that require veteran bankers that are increasingly hard to find in a region emerging from economic stagnation, according to the people with knowledge of the Itau hires and deal pipeline.
Itau has been hit by departures as well. Felipe Colin, a member of the bank’s debt capital markets and structured credit department, left in April to help start Hub Capital, a fintech company based in Rio de Janeiro. Mariana de Oliveira, Itau’s Santiago-based asset manager, left the same month to join Moneda Asset Management SA as assistant portfolio management, people with knowledge of her move said. She now oversees the Brazilian portfolio of the Chilean bank that invests in Latin American debt and equity.
A representative for Itau declined to comment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Pablo Gonzalez in in São Paulo at pgonzalez49@bloomberg.net;Ezra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net, Brendan Walsh
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