Brazil's B3 Plans to Buy Small Stake in Argentina's BYMA: CEO

(Bloomberg) -- B3 SA, the sole exchange operator in Brazil, plans to buy a share of Argentina’s national bourse, its chief executive officer said, in the company’s latest push across Latin America after taking minority ownership in exchanges from Mexico to Chile in recent years.

The Brazilian bourse is interested in a “small stake” in Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos SA, said Gilson Finkelsztain, B3’s CEO, said in an interview in Shanghai last Thursday.

B3 is the world’s seventh largest exchange by market value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company was formed last year with the merger of exchange operator BM&FBovespa SA and Cetip SA, which provided register and settlement services for over-the-counter markets.

Equity offerings in Brazil this year are down about 5 percent compared with the same period last year as political and economic turmoil rock markets. The biggest Brazilian company to IPO in 2018, fintech firm PagSeguro Digital Ltd., went public in New York.

Finkelsztain said that with about 10 to 15 new offerings in the pipeline, Brazil is unlikely to repeat last year’s 27 IPOs, the best total since 2010. October’s presidential election and fear of spillover from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s reduction of its balance sheet have created uncertainties, he said.

--With assistance from Felipe Marques.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jun Luo in Shanghai at jluo6@bloomberg.net;Amanda Wang in Shanghai at twang234@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Sam Mamudi, Julia Leite

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