Awards for Excellence 2020
|
|
The 2020 award for the best bank for advisory goes to BR Partners. It is an outstanding growth story: the investment bank boutique was opened just 10 years ago by founder and chief executive Ricardo Lacerda, previously of Citi and Goldman Sachs in Brazil.
BR Partners won this award in 2016 in recognition of the impressive growth it had achieved, but little did we think that in four years’ time the bank would top the Brazilian M&A rankings, beating both the resurgent international banks and the dominant local balance sheet-driven investment banking franchises in the region’s largest market.
BR Partners advised on 22 M&A deals with a combined value of $14.8 billion. The bank’s strong relationship with Petrobras has helped as the quasi-sovereign pursued a strong programme of disposals, which points to a large potential pipeline of federal and state privatizations in the years ahead.
The team led by Lacerda has now conducted 15 sales for the energy company – seven of which closed in 2019; including the R$1.5 billion ($273 billion) sale of Riacho da Forquilha Cluster to PetroReconcavo and the R$5.1 billion sale of a 50% stake in Tartaruga Verde field and Module III of the Espadarte field to Petronas.
|
|
|
Ricardo Lacerda |
BR Partners has also led on many other transformative deals for clients such as Group Casino, Copagaz and Hypera. The latter of these is a good example of the firm’s ability to operate outside its domestic market. It helped the group, which was formerly known as Hypermarcas, dispose of assets in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Peru.
BR Partners has clearly shown that despite its relative size it can compete with the largest firms on Faria Lima Avenue. The restructuring practice is one of the most admired in the country and continues to generate revenues.
In the last 12 months the team worked on some of Brazil’s most complex restructurings, including the obtainment of waivers and approvals from Invepar-owned Cart’s bondholders in June 2019 and March 2020, worth a combined R$1.1 billion.
This multidisciplinary focus has helped the bank’s internal numbers to continue to grow since it last won this award in 2016.
Total revenues hit R$229 million last year, up from R$134 million in 2016, and net income grew to R$77 million from R$46 million in the same period – delivering a 10-year compound annual growth rate of 11%. BR Partners generated a return on equity of 25.2% in 2019 and a return on assets of 14.1%.
