When Ilan Goldfajn left the presidency of Brazil’s central bank in March 2019, he had to observe a six-month cooling off period that prevented him from moving straight into a private-sector banking job.
He had joined the central bank from Banco Itaú, where he had been chief economist.
The contractual stipulation is typical. However, Goldfajn – who took up his new position as chairman of Credit Suisse Brazil in September 2019 – described it a little differently to Euromoney last month.
That quarantine was a lot better than this one!
Ilan Goldfajn
It had been, he says via Zoom, a different type of quarantine to the one that the world was and is in various stages of observing (and re-observing).
“That quarantine was a lot better than this one!” he quips.
It certainly sounds so: Goldfajn seemed to spend the majority of this enforced leisure travelling in the US, Europe and Israel.
“I went all over the place,” he says.
He was also, of course, at the same time fielding offers from banks back home in Brazil.
‘Natural choice’
His choice of an investment banking berth felt like a natural one, he says, following the regulatory axe he had taken to the previously comfortable retail sector.
A series of reforms to spur fintech competition and lower the hefty net interest margins prevalent in Brazil made the investment-banking sector a less controversial career path.
“I felt more comfortable accepting [a role] with an investment bank, where the regulation has been less hot – more ‘business as usual’,” he says.
Which all makes sense. But what Goldfajn didn’t say was if those retail banks, which are nursing the loss of the cosy market they had enjoyed before Goldfajn’s radical time leading the central bank, had been trying to contact him on his foreign travels.
Perhaps they were pleased to see the back of him.
