Brazil: The banks party through the crisis

All you need to make good money in Brazil is a banking licence, a few retail outlets and faith that your biggest customer will keep up payments. You don't need to worry too much about credit analysis, operating efficiency or branding. Risk-management skills may help you make even more money, but if you don't have them, relax, you should still come out ahead. Michael Peterson reports

The opportunities of privatization

Don’t worry about risk and efficiency: that seems to be the lesson Brazil’s banking sector can draw from its experience in recent months. The source of easy living is the government’s insatiable appetite for borrowing. And in January this year that appetite became still more voracious as the country’s debt – much of it denominated in dollars or dollar-linked – ballooned in local-currency terms following the devaluation of the real.

Brazil’s 50 largest banks made an annualized return on equity of 43.7%

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