Domestic brokers still hold the keys to Latin America’s corporations.
For the second year in a row, Brazilian banks dominated Institutional Investor’s annual ranking of Latin America’s Top Corporate Access Providers. São Paulo-based BTG Pactual once again ranked first among money managers and corporates alike, while neighbor and rival Itaú BBA held onto its second place position with both groups.
Nearly 700 investors from almost 400 firms voted on behalf of the buy side, while 180 respondents represented corporate points of view.
Voters rated banks across six attributes: facilitating one-on-one meetings with executives, arranging site visits and factory tours, hosting investor conferences, organizing non-deal roadshows, providing well-communicated and executed logistics, and coordinating in-depth and quality feedback between corporates and investors.
Buy-side voters ranked their favorite corporate access providers across 20 industries and regions, with the top three firms in each sector winning a spot on the first team, second team, or third team.
Combined, BTG Pactual and Itaú accounted for half of the total available team positions and 80 percent of the first-team spots.
BTG Pactual won top honors in 11 sectors: cement and construction; utilities; banks; non-bank financials; health care; metals and mining; real estate; retailing; technology, media, and telecommunications; Chile; and the North Andean countries.
Itaú, meanwhile, placed first in Brazil, as well as the industries of agribusiness, capital goods, food and beverages, and pulp and paper.
The dominance of these two local firms caused former champion JPMorgan Chases & Co. to slip further down the leaderboard, moving from second place to third among buy-side voters. Among corporates, the U.S. firm did still worse, falling from fourth place to sixth.
Santander earned third place in the corporate ranking. The Spanish bank also tied for fourth in the buy-side ranking, an honor it shared with Credit Suisse and UBS.
