In July 2001, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso sat down for dinner at the home of Olavo Setubal, then head of the Itaú group, alongside some of Brazil’s so-called “GDP heavyweights.” Around the table were Lázaro Brandão of Bradesco, Antônio Ermírio de Moraes of Votorantim and Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter of Gerdau, among others. The presidential succession was already looming, Lula was emerging as a competitive candidate, and “governability” was one of the topics on the agenda that evening.
Twenty-five years later, some of the seats look remarkably familiar. At meetings held in recent days with presidential candidates Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, Bradesco, Itaú, Gerdau and Votorantim were represented on both sides. That does not look much like an electoral endorsement. It looks like what large corporate groups do with any meaningful risk: diversify. But focusing only on who stayed obscures the bigger change. The table itself has changed.
At Cardoso’s dinner, Brazil’s economic elite still had a distinctly industrial identity. Antônio Ermírio was almost the personification of Brazilian industry. Jorge Gerdau ran a domestic steelmaker in the midst of rapid expansion. Odebrecht, Camargo Corrêa, Sadia and other large productive groups were also part of Brasília’s corporate orbit. Banks had always been close to political power, but they shared the room with businessmen whose core business was building factories, steel mills, highways, power plants and large engineering projects.
The 2026 picture looks different. Flávio Bolsonaro’s gathering included Itaú, Bradesco and Santander, alongside Nubank, B3, Lumina and other financial-market players. Lula’s table was broader — Gerdau, Votorantim, Cosan, Amil and MRV were there — but it also included Itaú, Bradesco, BR Partners and BTG Pactual. Two figures may be the defining business stars of this generation: André Esteves of BTG Pactual and Joesley Batista of J&F, both of whom turned existing businesses into major forces in Brazilian capitalism — one in finance, the other in industry. At both dinners, the state of Brazil’s public finances was a central part of the conversation.
Some of the old protagonists, however, have simply disappeared from the picture. The major engineering contractors no longer occupy the place they once held in Brasília before the Lava Jato corruption investigation and the sweeping restructuring that followed. MRV was at Lula’s table, but it represents a different kind of construction business: homebuilding, not the old model of national contractors capable of designing and delivering hydroelectric dams, subway systems, refineries and highways across Brazil and abroad. More revealing still is how some of the survivors themselves have changed. Fábio Ermírio’s Votorantim, now an investment holding company, is no longer Antônio Ermírio’s industrial conglomerate. Gerdau took another path: it remains a steelmaker but has become deeply international. Its next dollar of investment may now be allocated among Brazil, the United States, Mexico and other markets.
Finance, meanwhile, occupies a place in Brazil’s business elite that it did not command to the same degree in 2001. That does not require the financial sector’s share of GDP to have exploded. It means that those who manage and allocate capital have gained influence relative to those who own and operate productive assets. It also helps explain why fiscal policy now carries such weight in conversations with presidential candidates. For banks, asset managers, investors and large pools of wealth, the trajectory of public debt directly affects real interest rates, government bonds, credit spreads, the currency, equities and portfolio values. Fiscal policy is not merely a precondition for investment in the real economy. It is part of the price of money itself.
That is why the recent dinners may be receiving too much of an electoral reading. There was far more Faria Lima — shorthand for Brazil’s financial establishment — around the tables in 2026 than in that snapshot of the country’s business elite in 2001. Over the past 25 years, engineering contractors have lost influence, old conglomerates have become investment holdings, companies have internationalized and finance has moved closer to the center of corporate power. A generation ago, many of the men at the table were deciding where to build the next factory. Today, increasingly, the question is whether it makes sense to build it at all — or simply invest the money elsewhere.
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