# BTG: From Faria Lima to the Real Economy

*With a stake in Cosan, Esteves expands the partners’ holding into more regulated sectors.*

- Published: 2026-01-01
- Updated: 2025-12-20
- Author: André Vieira
- Section: Behind the Lines
- Tags: BTG, Cosan
- URL: https://brazilstockguide.com/behind-the-lines/btg-from-faria-lima-to-the-real-economy-2/

![](https://i0.wp.com/brazilstockguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Bank.png?fit=427%2C386&ssl=1)

BTG Pactual’s partners are no longer just bankers. In 2025, André Esteves bought a strategic stake in **Cosan (R$44 billion in revenue in 2024)**, adding to positions in **Eneva**, V.tal, Beontag and Estapar. It marks the passage from Faria Lima’s **glass towers** into the real economy.

The opportunity was too cheap to miss. Cosan was deleveraging, and BTG came in at a low price. Now, as co-controller of railways, biofuels, natural gas and logistics, Esteves joins an exclusive circle. Other financial conglomerates have made similar moves — Itaú with **Itaúsa**, Bradesco with **Bradespar**. The difference is that those holdings became dividend machines. BTG’s partnership model suggests a sharper appetite for intervention.

Finance is already regulated and politicised. But by moving into infrastructure and energy, BTG adds new arenas to be manoeuvred — concessions, tariffs, subsidies. More power, but also more variables beyond its control. A single fiscal or regulatory change could erode returns.

BTG prides itself on seeing annual capital market issuance leap from about **R$125 billion a decade ago to more than R$800 billion today**, funding sanitation, roads and PPPs. But without lower long-term interest rates, the equity market will remain frozen — and the dream of financing infrastructure through equity will stay on paper.

Esteves wants BTG to be more than “better than Goldman.” If he succeeds, it will crown a new **financial-industrial giant** in Brazil. If he fails, it will blur the clarity of its model — agile bank plus disciplined partnership — into a sprawling conglomerate. Either way, it is already too powerful to ignore.

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Source: Brazil Stock Guide, https://brazilstockguide.com/behind-the-lines/btg-from-faria-lima-to-the-real-economy-2/