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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