"Our base case is that the pensions reform gets approved this year.”
The view is an outlier, but an important one because the person who is saying this is André Schwartz, deputy chief executive of Brasil Plural and responsible for the investment banking department.
Schwartz has a long-standing relationship with Paulo Guedes, who will serve as the minister of the economy in the coming Bolsonaro administration. Schwartz worked for him at the firm Guedes created, Pactual, rising to become a partner. They have kept in touch since as Guedes remains “an investor [in Brasil Plural], a client and a friend.”
It is also the view of the bank’s new economist, José Márcio Camargo. The 70-year-old is extremely well-connected in Brasilia and has been visiting the capital weekly for the past couple of years – invited by outgoing president Michel Temer and president of the chamber of deputies Rodrigo Maia to inform and educate congressman (in group sessions and individual meetings) about the seriousness of the country’s fiscal situation and the urgency for pensions reform to cut burgeoning spending liabilities.
Schwartz declines to give any specific details of conversations with anyone in congress or the incoming administration that support this view.
