In the early 1980s a young man called Ilson Mateus was working as a gold miner in the Brazilian state of Para. He heard about a town in the neighbouring state of Maranhao called Balsas that, he was told, had struck a different type of gold – soy beans. Mateus decided to take what he had saved, buy a truck and fill it with boxes of drinks to sell to the workers in the burgeoning soy fields that surrounded the town.
Jump To
In less than a year, Mateus had two trucks. One year later, in 1986, he founded a grocery store and today Grupo Mateus is, according to the Brazilian Supermarket Association, the 12th-largest grocer in Brazil, with annual revenues of R$7.5 billion ($1.39 billion).
These types of companies are a tough IPO sell for international investment banks operating in Brazil. With likely zero previous contact, they are the organic growth stories that are transforming the wealth dynamics of the country away from the southern coastal cities that have previously dominated its business wealth – and capital market transactions origination.
So
