(Bloomberg) -- Eduardo Guardia, a partner at Brazil’s Banco BTG Pactual SA who backed fiscal austerity during a long public service career, including a brief stint as finance minister, has died. He was 56.

His death was confirmed by a BTG spokesperson, who declined to give further details. 

Guardia served as Brazil’s finance minister for nine months in former President Michel Temer’s administration in 2018, after his previous boss Henrique Meirelles left to run for president. After little more than a month in office, Guardia had to grapple with a dramatic 10-day nationwide trucker strike that crushed Latin America’s largest economy, causing factories to shut down and fuel prices to soar. 

He was also a key backer of Brazil’s pension reform bill, which proposed an overhaul in the nation’s bloated public pension system. The measure was seen by investors as a massive step in putting the country’s public accounts on a sustainable path, and would take years to clear congress. Kicked off by Meirelles in 2016, the bill was only approved during Paulo Guedes’s tenure as economic minister in 2019.

After leaving the government, Guardia joined the region’s largest standalone investment bank Banco BTG Pactual SA as a partner in 2019. At BTG, he was responsible for the bank’s asset management unit, presiding over a surge in the amount of money the bank oversees. The increase coincided with a period of growth for Brazil’s money management industry, as record-low interest rates pushed investors to riskier products such as hedge funds.

Guardia also helped implement a strategy for BTG to purchase minority stakes in other asset-management firms, including one set up by Itau Asset Management’s former Chief Executive Officer, Rubens Henriques and Miami-based Kawa Capital Management. He also helped expand BTG’s asset-management products into alternative assets, including new forest funds.

Guardia was born on Jan. 19, 1966, in Sao Paulo. He worked as Brazil’s Treasury secretary in 2002 and was finance minister of Sao Paulo state -- the nation’s richest -- between 2003 and 2006. For almost six years he worked at Brazil’s stock exchange operator B3 SA as chief financial officer and head of products, which put him in direct contact with senior executives at big banks. 

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