Take away from Roberto Setubal’s conference in Sao Paulo

Roberto Setubal, president and CEO of Brazilian bank Itaú Unibanco, gave a conference at the “2010 Latin American Cities Conference: São Paulo,” that this sixth edition has the theme “Brazil is the Future.”

Strengthen the capital markets. According Setubal, it is necessary to strengthen the capital market, which gets to be attractive to foreign investment, but much depends on the tax issue in the country and the stage of the external economy. He said the private sector would need to invest more in Brazil, because most of the investments made today comes from the public sector.

Lack of domestic savings is a problem. In the evaluation of Setubal, the investments already made in Brazil are here to stay, but there is a serious problem in the economy: the lack of domestic savings enough to provide strong growth rates of 6% to 7% per annum on a sustainable .

Itau Unibanco’s internationalization. The President of Itau Unibanco also said that the institution is evaluating opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. Setubal believes that opportunities are open for the next three years, given the stage of the Brazilian economy. He said the process of internationalization of the bank, announced when the merger occurred with Unibanco, depend on the solidification process of integrating the operations of both institutions.

Parenthesis: his comment on the integration of the two banks: Itau and Unibanco. We also advise that would devote effort to integrating the two institutions,” said Setubal. He said the process of integrating the two groups, one with 70 000 employees and another with 30 000 employees, has just been a slow process, given the differences of cultures.

Latin America is the first target. However, he said, the results collected so far are satisfactory, but can not yet say that the process had already been consolidated. After this stage, according to Setubal, the bank intends to resume its international perspective, but the interest of the company is starting with Latin America.

Brazilian economy growth in the next years. Setubal also predicted for the next 10 years growth of around 5% for the Brazilian economy. According to him, despite the expected growth rate to be very close to what was seen before the crisis of 2008, his vision for Brazil is positive. He highlighted the difference in contemporary Brazil from the reality of  20 years ago, noting that today the country is “on the world map” as a strong economy. ‘Brazil today is no longer an emerging economy, already has its place in world economy. ”

According to him, the fact that Brazil has gone quickly from the global economic crisis has caught the attention of the country that did not come close. “Now our growth is greater than the world average,” he said. “If we take into account the major western economies, Brazil’s is the fastest growing,” he reiterated.