Executives in Brazil’s financial circles are competing for meetings with Flávio Bolsonaro and his aides after a shockingly strong showing in the first-round presidential vote vaulted him to front-runner status.
It’s a swift turnaround from a few months ago, when polls showing dim prospects for the right-wing populist made executives more likely to align with the leftist incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
André Esteves, the chair of BTG Pactual, exemplifies the switch. A month ago, he helped organize a dinner hosted by Lula at the presidential palace, curating the guest list of business executives and issuing invites. Attendees included Joesley Batista, the meatpacking kingpin, who had traveled to China with the president in 2023.
Esteves, Batista and other business leaders had already been gradually drawing closer to Bolsonaro’s camp as the senator gained ground in the polls, and those efforts intensified after the first round of the election, according to people familiar with the matter. Batista’s aides are seeking inroads to Bolsonaro’s circle, while Esteves has sought to influence personnel decisions in a potential Bolsonaro administration, including by touting his bank’s chief economist, Mansueto Almeida, for finance minister. Esteves has also grown increasingly close to Sao Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas, a key ally of the Bolsonaro family, the people say.
The pair of prominent business leaders — BTG is Latin America’s biggest investment bank and Batista’s JBS SA is the world’s top meat producer — have long cultivated relationships across the political spectrum, and Esteves had a private dinner with Bolsonaro weeks before the election. Now they’re part of a broader rush among bankers, executives and investors to strengthen ties with Bolsonaro and his allies ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff.
A spokesperson for BTG and Esteves declined to comment. A person close to BTG and Esteves said that the bank’s executives and shareholders talk to officials from across the political spectrum all the time, and that approach hasn’t changed since the first round of the elections. Batista didn’t reply to a request for comment.
The repositioning has also extended to groups such as Esfera Brasil, a non-partisan think tank that hosted more than 500 business leaders at a dinner with Lula in September. It’s now rushing to arrange meetings with Bolsonaro’s allies amid a surge in interest, according to people familiar with the discussions. Esfera Brasil didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg News spoke with about a dozen executives, spanning industries including health, infrastructure, commodities and retail, about the overtures to Bolsonaro since the first-round vote. They asked not to be identified discussing the sensitive situation.
Partly that’s because not long ago, Bolsonaro was widely dismissed in elite circles along with his father, Jair. The older Bolsonaro is a Donald Trump ally whose presidency ended in scandal when he was convicted of attempting to plot a coup after being voted out of office. Much of Brazilian society treated the family as pariahs, and the idea any Bolsonaro could win office again seemed farfetched.
But like Trump’s comeback in the US, the Bolsonaro brand has been revived. After trailing Lula in most polls for much of the campaign, Flávio Bolsonaro finished the first-round vote 2 percentage points ahead, though still short of the majority he needed to win outright.
For the second round, a BTG Pactual/Nexus survey released Oct. 13 showed Bolsonaro likely to win 52% of valid votes, compared with 48% for Lula. The poll of 2,002 voters had a margin of error of 2 percentage points. Bolsonaro draws support not only from those seeking a more market-friendly economic agenda, but also a broader coalition that has sustained his father’s legacy — including evangelicals, rural voters tied to agriculture and social conservatives.
Investors cheered after the first-round results, sending Brazilian markets to one of their best days in years. The real surged as much as 5%, stocks posted their biggest gain since 2020 and swap rates tumbled more than 100 basis points in a single session.
Forging Ties
At the same time businesses are seeking meetings with Bolsonaro, some are also turning down invitations to events with members of Lula’s government as they recalibrate their political exposure ahead of the runoff, the people said.
Business leaders who skipped the recent Esfera Brasil dinner with Lula are now privately expressing relief that they are less likely to be seen as tied to the incumbent, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Executives seeking to influence Bolsonaro are hoping to shape a team capable of delivering a more market-friendly agenda and avoiding what they regard as personnel mistakes during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Some business leaders are also arguing for a delay in the tax reform approved under Lula, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Companies are making suggestions even at the sector level. Education groups, for example, have proposed candidates to lead the Education Ministry, according to one of the people familiar with the overtures. Others have raised the possibility of reversing a current government rule that bars some investment funds from buying claims arising from lawsuits or arbitration proceedings, a person said.
Marcelo Kayath, the former head of Credit Suisse in Brazil and now a partner at QMS Capital, and Daniella Marques, the former head of Caixa Econômica Federal and one of Bolsonaro’s main economic advisers, are among the figures drawing interest from business leaders. Executives and investors have been speaking with both as they seek clues about the candidate’s economic plans and the makeup of a potential government, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The intense effort to gain access has parallels with corporate America’s relationship with Trump. Executives from manufacturers, Wall Street and other industries have repeatedly sought direct access to the president and his senior advisers, making the White House an increasingly important venue for corporate lobbying.
Some Brazilian executives see the possibility of a similarly close relationship between the private sector and the presidential palace under Flávio Bolsonaro, according to people familiar with the conversations.
To be sure, some of the enthusiasm is being tempered by memories of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. Business leaders cite the departure of market-oriented officials as a risk, bringing up the example of Salim Mattar, the businessman who quit as privatization chief in 2020 after becoming frustrated with the slow pace of asset sales.
The concern among executives isn’t only who Bolsonaro would appoint, but whether those officials would retain enough political support to carry out an economic agenda once in office, the people said.
For companies still contending with expensive debt and weak domestic demand, the stakes are more immediate: whether a new government can translate the market’s post-election optimism into lower financing costs and better conditions for investment.