In the business of connecting investors with Latin American executives and other experts, there is no one-size fits all.
This was especially true as macro catalysts drove the MSCI Latin America Equity Index over the past year, according to André Carvalho, director of research at Bradesco BBI. There were outflows from equity funds and inflows to fixed-income funds over the past year in Latin America. “As a result of redemptions and high macro risks, equity fund managers kept their preference for large-cap names and more liquid stocks rather than smaller ones,” he said. “Investor positioning has remained defensive most of the time and cash holdings are high.”
Sell-side houses were forced to allocate more resources to macro events, including many trips to the region, he reported. “Consistent corporate access services related to macro and regulatory matters was much appreciated by investors and events were very well attended,” he said. “In addition, demand for bespoke meetings has also increased over the past year, as investors were mapping the existing opportunities to pull the trigger whenever macro risks abated. Therefore, corporate access had to provide consistent and differentiated events and service.”
According to Juliana Dias, head of corporate access for BTG Pactual, the past year of corporate access in the region was one of “exclusivity and timing.”
“More exclusive activities and thematic meetings are becoming increasingly popular,” she said. “Companies and investors prefer interactions that ensure top-notch, in-depth conversations. We are increasingly investing in formats that enable this kind of exchange.”
A top corporate access team also harnesses new technologies and proprietary data to deliver the full picture to clients, according to the top firms in the region.
Bradesco has invested in exclusive data via an initiative called the BBI Data Vault, which comprises a series of reports containing Bradesco BBI’s exclusive data. “We also regularly published on Brazilian companies’ financial situations, their financing sources, how financial resources have been allocated in the country among different assets, and provided exclusive data about airlines,” Carvalho said.
Data needs to be integrated across the firm, according to BTG Pactual’s Dias. “Besides prospecting and preparing products — conferences, roadshows, site visits, investor trips, events, etc. — our team constantly uses careful data intelligence that allows for constant strategy analysis and evaluations by the sales team,” she said. “Integration between sales, research, trading, and corporate access is vital to the success of our overall strategy. Data analysis and team integration ensure we are always focusing our efforts in the right direction, balancing our operation efficiently throughout the year.”
Clients are happy, according to Institutional Investor’s 2023 ranking of Latin America’s Top Corporate Access Providers. BTG Pactual is once again No. 1 based on responses from 325 investors and 175 corporate voters.
Buyside voters ranked Itau BBA second and Bradesco BBI third. JPMorgan Chase and Santander respectively placed fourth and fifth from the investor point of view.
From the corporate point of view, Itau BBA was second, followed by Santander in third and JPMorgan in fourth. Bradesco BBI rounded out the top five.
“Corporates want the best of two worlds: they want to be connected with the largest number of investors possible and also have top-quality one-on-one meetings with the biggest investors,” Bradesco’s Carvalho said. “We help corporates by mixing events for large groups of clients alongside carefully chosen selective individual meetings, as well as virtual meetings, NDRs, conferences, sector-specific days, and many other different ways to connect them with investors.”
As for investors, demand has changed in three ways. “First, there is more demand for full-service houses as the commission pool decreased, and investors had to focus their trading and deals on fewer sell-side houses. Second, as investors started to diversify their country allocation slightly more across LatAm, they subsequently increased their demand for corporate access in the region rather than just asking for a specialized service in specific countries,” Carvalho said. “Third, investors want fast and easy contacts with multiple speakers, which means that the demand for virtual meetings remains high.”
The confluence of the online and in-person worlds enabled BTG Pactual to significantly expand its presence and speed in the market, according to Dias. “We strive to preserve the habits of remote interaction that the pandemic brought, seeking to identify which products make more sense in the virtual world and which are more fitting for the in-person universe. This means the scope of our operation keeps expanding, totaling more than 54,000 interactions in 2022.”
