(Bloomberg) -- Banco BTG Pactual SA, the biggest independent investment bank in Latin America, bought Miami-based multifamily office Greytown Advisors Inc. as part of its global expansion.
“Greytown was not the first or the only one we looked at, but it was the first one we reached an agreement with after two years of courtship,” said Rogerio Pessoa, partner and head of wealth management at Sao Paulo-based BTG, adding that additional similar acquisitions are possible. Terms of the Greytown purchase weren’t disclosed.
BTG years ago identified opportunities to eventually acquire multifamily offices in the US and add them to its platform, since in Florida alone there are more than 100 registered investment advisers serving Latin American clients, according to Pessoa. Greytown, with $1 billion in assets under management, brings expertise with ultra high-net-worth clients in Central America, a region with very concentrated wealth and where BTG has a very small presence.
“There is almost no overlap of clients,” Pessoa said, adding that there’s also “a cultural fit,” since the president of Greytown, Marcello Correa, is Brazilian and worked at one of the first investment banks in Brazil, Banco Garantia. Correa, who was previously president of BAC Florida Investments and a portfolio manager at Credit Suisse, now becomes a partner at BTG.
On the other hand, BTG brings investment-banking services and credit capabilities to Greytown’s clients and their companies, along with research and its operational structure, said Daniel Passy, BTG’s head of wealth management in the US.
With the Greytown acquisition, which has already been approved by regulators, BTG has about 45 billion reais ($8.2 billion) under management at its multifamily office business, with outlets in Brazil, Chile, Europe and the US, Pessoa said.
BTG said in June that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire New York-based M.Y. Safra Bank. The lender, which has no ties to J. Safra Group, had a loan portfolio at the end of March totaling $275 million. The acquisition comes after the takeover of FIS Privatbank in Luxembourg last year.
BTG also has offices in Madrid, Lisbon, London and Riyadh as well as a broker-dealer in the US and wealth-management businesses in cities including Miami. In Latin America, the company has a bank in Chile and Colombia and a local presence in Argentina, Mexico and Peru.
BTG’s wealth-management business and personal banking reached 799 billion reais in assets under management in June, 27% more than a year earlier, according to its financial statements.
(Updates with Correa’s previous jobs in fourth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the currency of assets under management in sixth paragraph.)
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