CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrFoto: Magnus Hagdorn. Anne Robinson deja Citi para liderar el departamento legal de Vanguard
Vanguard has announced that Anne E. Robinson will join the $3.5 trillion investment management firm next month as General Counsel and Managing Director of its Legal and Compliance Division. She most recently served as a Managing Director and General Counsel Global Cards and Consumer Services at Citi.
“Anne Robinson is an ideal addition to Vanguard’s senior leadership team. Her expansive and varied legal experience in the financial services and consulting fields will be of great value to Vanguard and our clients,” said Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb.
Ms. Robinson will assume leadership of Vanguard’s Legal and Compliance Division from Managing Director Heidi Stam, who announced her intentions to retire in October 2015.
As a member of the firm’s 12-person senior leadership team, Ms. Robinson will be responsible for all legal and compliance activities, including regulatory, corporate, and litigation matters.
After spending the early part of her career in private law practice and with Deloitte Consulting, Ms. Robinson joined American Express in 2003 and served in various legal positions of increasing responsibility. She joined Citi in 2014 as the General Counsel for Global Cards. She received a B.A. degree in political science with honors from Hampton University in 1991 and graduated from the Columbia Law School in 1994.
Foto: Remko van Dokkum
. Legg Mason adquiere Financial Guard
Legg Mason announced that it has agreed to acquire an 82% majority equity interest in Financial Guard, an onlineRegistered Investment Advisor and innovative technology-enabled wealth managementand investment advice platform. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The firm will operate as part of Legg Mason’s alternative distribution strategies business, which focuses on combining technology with the firm´s investment affiliates’ capabilities to better serve clients. The investment is part of its overall long-term strategy focused on creating choice for investors across investment capability, product and vehicle, and distribution.
Financial Guard’s aggregation technology provides advisors the ability to create a comprehensive picture of clients’ financial positions and recommend potential solutions to meet their clients’ investment objectives. It offers portfolio analysis and recommendations for a large universe of both passive and active funds. By making the technology available to advisors and their clients, both brands intend to help financial institutions grow their advisory business and be well-positioned to conform to the new Department of Labor fiduciary standard, set to be implemented in April 2017. Legg Mason will offer the Financial Guard platform to firms who are looking for technology solutions to assist them in meeting expanded compliance requirements in a holistic, cost efficient way.
More broadly, as demand continues to grow for technology-enabled advice, it becomes increasingly important for firms to offer to all of their clients technology solutions that are intuitive and easy to implement across a client’s entire portfolio. The technology offered by the firms can be implemented seamlessly at distribution partner firms to help them provide comprehensive advice.
Legg Mason plans to complement the Financial Guard platform’s existing capabilities with investment products from its nine independent investment managers, including multi-asset class solutions from QS Investors.
Pavilion Financial Corporation, a North American based employee-owned, investment services firm, is planning to acquire Altius Holdings, the parent company of Altius Associates, a global private markets advisory and separate account management firm with offices in the UK, U.S. and Singapore. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year subject to regulatory approval.
Pavilion will combine the operations of Altius Associates with LP Capital Advisors, the alternative asset advisory subsidiary of Pavilion headquartered in Sacramento, California. The combination will create a larger global alternative asset class advisory platform with expanded depth and breadth of services and geographic footprint. At closing, the combined organisation will be rebranded as Pavilion Alternatives Group and represent Pavilion’s global advisory platform specialising in alternative asset classes with total alternative assets under advisement of over US$60 billion, out of a total US$570 billion.
Pavilion Alternatives Group will be comprised of approximately 70 dedicated professionals located in London, UK; Singapore; and across offices in North America (Sacramento, Richmond, Boston, Salt Lake City and Montreal). All senior management from Altius Associates and LPCA will remain in leadership positions in Pavilion Alternatives Group.
“This acquisition, our fifth since 2010, is consistent with our strategy of assembling various expert and specialized teams to bring top quality investment advisory services and solutions to our clients,” said Daniel Friedman, President of Pavilion. “Altius has an excellent reputation in providing alternative asset consulting to a global clientele over a span of nearly 20 years. Altius and LPCA already share common values and a proven client service approach and they complement each other geographically. Together, we will form a stronger alternative asset class advisory platform for Pavilion offering consulting services and solutions across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds.”
John Hess, London-based Executive Chairman and founder of Altius Associates added, “Since our founding in 1998, we have been globally focussed. Our professionals have over 150 years of experience working with clients across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia with global research coverage. We are delighted to join Pavilion’s team and excited by their enthusiasm to work together to grow our business.”
“We firmly believe that our partnership with Pavilion will provide our clients with access to greater resources that will enhance our already strong advisory and research capabilities, while maintaining our entrepreneurial culture and client-service standards,” said Brad Young, co-CEO with Altius Associates in Richmond. “As part of Pavilion Alternatives Group, we will have additional resources to recruit top talent and invest in the development of our service offering and expansion of our global footprint.”
Donn Cox, President and Managing Director of LPCA said, “Combining forces with Altius will provide our clients with additional resources in North America, significant global reach into Europe, Australia and Asia, and enhanced service offerings and solutions without compromising our focus of providing objective and thoughtful advice with a fiduciary mindset. In addition to advising highly sophisticated institutional investors around the globe in private markets, Altius has a proven track record in providing customized solutions to its clients. Its deep and global research capabilities, dedicated private debt platform and significant real asset resources will also complement our core service offerings.”
According to a report from China Industrial Bank (CIB) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on Chinese private banking development in 2016, despite the slowing Chinese economic growth, the wealth of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) is rising steadily. It is estimated that China’s high net worth families will reach 3.88 million by 2020 and their investable financial assets will then account for 51％ of China’s individual wealth, offering great opportunities for the development of private banking business.
The report, called 2016 China Wealth Report: Growing Against the Trend with Global Asset Allocation notes that as the Chinese economy continues to open, the demand of HNWIs for global asset allocation will increase significantly. It is estimated that the proportion of Chinese individual assets to be allocated overseas will increase from the current 4.8％ to about 9.4％ in the next 5 years. And that from 2015 to 2020, HNWIs’ investable financial assets will increase at an average annual rate of 15％, significantly higher than the projected GDP growth rate of 6.5％ over the same period.
Chen Jinguang, CIB Vice President, is optimistic about the prospect of China’s private banking, saying, “It is estimated that China’s high net worth families will reach 3.88 million by 2020 and their investable financial assets will then account for 51％ of China’s individual wealth, offering great opportunities for the development of private banking business. However, at the same time, we should recognize the undersupply of private banking services. At present, China’s private banking institutions manage less than 20％ of the wealth of high net worth families, which implies huge opportunities for development. Moreover, in recent years, the banking industry has been accelerated its transformation, focusing on developing capital-light businesses. During this process, private banking business will face unprecedented development opportunities by taking advantage of connecting investment asset and private wealth.
According to their survey, about 30％ of HNWIs have invested overseas, and 56％ have not yet but say they will consider overseas investment in the next three years. “As the most dynamic participants in China’s economy, HNWIs are leaders in bringing China in line with the international norms. China’s continuous economic globalization will drive the HNWIs to shift from domestic wealth allocation to global wealth allocation.”
The survey points out that, against the background of Chinese economic globalization, RMB exchange rate volatility and declining domestic return on assets, the drivers for overseas investment of HNWIs will be more diversified. The change of drivers will create more business opportunities for Chinese Private Banks: the number of customers seeking overseas investments will expand, including not just ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) but also HNWIs; the shift from real estate to financial assets will increase demand for wealth management services; and the shift from overseas-oriented one-way flow to domestic-overseas two-way flow will help expand Chinese institutions’ operations into foreign markets.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Dave Humphreys. Assessing Brexit And The Impact On The Recovery In Europe
Over a week has passed since the UK electorate narrowly voted to leave the European Union (EU). The MSCI Europe Index fell 10% in the subsequent two days and then bounced back to recover most of that drawdown. On the currency front, sterling fell 10% when compared to pre-referendum levels.
Interestingly, Investec notes that changes in credit spreads and sovereign bond yields in Europe have remained muted indicating stability in that part of the financial market. But for Ken Hsia, portfolio manager European Equity Fund at the firm, this is quite different from the reaction to concerns of a slowdown in 2011/12.
According to the Investec expert, the UK’s decision to leave the EU has resulted in more short-term uncertainty, there is arguably now an opportunity for dialogue and a re-casting of policy to refresh relationships across Europe on a footing that is more aligned with current thinking about the role and purpose of the EU.
How these discussions evolve should interest those outside the region as some themes have global resonance. With government bond yields largely underpinned, Investec believes the relative attractiveness of equities remains intact, especially when corporate balance sheets are the healthiest they have been for many years. Naturally, the pace of recovery in corporate earnings once again comes into question. However, the firm continues to see good bottom-up investment opportunities within the region as identified by our 4Factor process.
What are the opportunities and risks posed by Brexit for European equities?
It is clear that the prevailing uncertainty will be a drag on economic growth, however, we are seeing some new steers from our 4Factor process. We believe, capital projects with long payback periods will be shelved until there is more certainty. However, we believe, projects with shorter paybacks should not be affected, especially those projects which boost productivity.
In the Investec European Equity Fund, we have reduced exposure to companies that are affected by weakening domestic consumption, but we are happy with our holdings in exporters, as they should see some tailwinds from the weaker sterling.
We are considering further investment in the mining sector, where again the supply/demand dynamic after several years of oversupply is now showing some signs of better balance. We note that European companies in the global energy (Total, BP, Royal Dutch Shell) and mining (BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto) sectors are world-class companies.
How is the Investec European Equity Fund currently positioned to UK equities?
At present, the Investec European Equity Fund is approximately 3% underweight the UK, with a combination of domestic companies (Bovis, BT, National Grid, Just Eat) and some multi-nationals (Shire, BP, Imperial Brands, Paysafe Group). Of these, we believe, Bovis and Just Eat are the most exposed to changes in the UK economy. However, for multi-national companies the UK is typically less than 10% of revenue. The portfolio’s greatest overweights by country are France and the Netherlands.
As well as the direct impact from revenue exposure there may be further effects, but many of these will take some time to come to fruition. For issues such as regulatory change, tourism or trade negotiations, it is too early to assess the impact. In aggregate though, we expect performance to be driven by individual stock price moves rather than portfolio positioning. The beta of the portfolio is 0.98, with market risk therefore a minimal component of tracking error.
Brexit aside, where are we seeing signs of recovery in Europe?
To answer this question, we need to take a closer look at the current state of economic recovery in Europe. Speci cally, we will look at two cyclical (economically-sensitive) industries which have been leading indicators on our sector steers, the automotive industry and the cement industry, to re ect on current demand trends and reasons for the sluggish pace of recovery.
What are the risks to our investment case on European equities?
Though the near term may be dominated by mixed headlines, stock markets normally embed a longer-term perspective. We continue to see a recovery in European corporate earnings, albeit the pace can be frustrating. Also, we observe more companies adopting self-help strategies to enhance corporate returns which, if successful, could lead to enhanced shareholder returns. Corporate balance sheets are the healthiest they have been since before the global financial crisis. In this regard, the potential value created through any re-leveraging – for example; M&A activity and share buybacks – has yet to be realised for Europe, which is not necessarily the case for the US.
Dividends are growing due to improving cash flow and strengthening balance sheets, which have not seen the re-leveraging that often occurs at the end of stock-market cycles. To put things into perspective, the historical price chart for the Eurostoxx 50 Index below (covering 50 ‘blue chip’ stocks from 12 euro-zone countries) suggests the market is trading back in line with long-term trends. Analysis shows recent cycle troughs in 2009, 2011 and 2012, when headlines had a notable impact on market dynamics.
The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has published its latest Investment Funds Industry Fact Sheet, which provides net sales of UCITS and non-UCITS for April 2016 from 28 associations representing more than 99 percent of total UCITS and AIF assets’ net sales data.
The main developments in April 2016 can be summarized as follows:
Net inflows into UCITS and AIF increased to EUR 65 billion, up from EUR 26 billion in March.
Net inflows into UCITS amounted to EUR 44 billion, considerably higher than the EUR 8 billion recorded in March.
The increase in UCITS net sales was driven by stronger net sales of long-term UCITS and money market funds.
Long-term UCITS (UCITS excluding money market funds) recorded net inflows of EUR 33 billion, compared to EUR 18 billion in March.
Net inflows into bond funds increased to EUR 24 billion, from EUR 11 billion in March.
Multi-asset funds recorded net sales of EUR 6 billion, same as in March.
On the other hand, equity funds continued to experience net outflows, albeit lower than in March (EUR 2 billion).
Net sales of UCITS money market funds rebounded to EUR 11 billion, from net outflows of EUR 10 billion in March.
AIF recorded net inflows of EUR 21 billion, compared to EUR 19 billion in March.
Net assets of UCITS increased by 1.4% in April to EUR 8,104 billion, and AIF net assets increased by 0.7% to EUR 5,148 billion.
Overall, total net assets of European investment funds increased by 1.1% in April to stand at EUR 13,252 billion at the end of the month.
Bernard Delbecque, director of Economics and Research at EFAMA commented: “The accommodative monetary policy and the stimulus still in the pipeline supported the demand for bond and multi-assets funds in April, whereas weak economic growth and downside risks continued to weigh on equity funds.”
You can read the EFAMA Investment Funds Industry Fact Sheet in the following link.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrFoto: Unsplash / Pixabay. John DeVoy regresa a Loomis, Sayles & Company
Loomis, Sayles & Company announced that John DeVoy, CFA, returned to the company as a dedicated credit strategist for the flagship full discretion team. Simultaneously, Brian Kennedy and Todd Vandam, CFA, assume full-time portfolio management roles on the full discretion team and will transition their credit strategist responsibilities (investment grade and high yield respectively) to John. Todd, Brian and John will report to Elaine Stokes and Matt Eagan, co-heads of the full discretion team.
“The complexity of global fixed income markets continues to expand as does investor demand across the full discretion product suite. We are pleased that John is back on board to dedicate his full efforts to providing insight on credit trends,” said Elaine Stokes. “Additionally, John’s role allows Brian and Todd the time to focus exclusively on portfolio management. Their promotions are reflective of the excellent work they have done managing various full discretion strategies to date.”
As a dedicated resource for the full discretion team, John’s responsibilities will include:
Providing insight into cyclical and secular credit trends affecting the investment environment for the full discretion portfolio management team
Partnering with the firm’s various credit analysts and sector teams to form opinions of investment opportunities
Providing team portfolio managers with specific investment and trade recommendations in the corporate sector across the full discretion product line
As co-portfolio manager on the Loomis Sayles full discretion team, Brian joins veteran fixed income managers Dan Fuss, Elaine Stokes and Matt Eagan on the full suite of Loomis Sayles multisector funds and strategies, which includes the Loomis Sayles Bond Fund and Loomis Sayles Strategic Income Fund. In February 2013, Brian was named co-portfolio manager of the Loomis Sayles Investment Grade Bond and Loomis Sayles Investment Grade Fixed Income funds.
Todd is one of the founding co-portfolio managers of the Loomis Sayles strategic alpha strategy that launched in 2010, which currently has $4.4 billion in assets under management. Additionally, Todd is a co-portfolio manager of the Loomis Sayles US high yield strategy (currently $3.5 billion) and Loomis Sayles global high yield strategy ($290 million).
Nick Langley - Foto cedida
. RARE Infrastructure (filial de Legg Mason): ¿Por qué son interesantes las inversiones en infraestructuras?
One of the first things that you realise when you start looking into the infrastructure asset class is that everyone’s definition of what ‘infrastructure’ is varies. Our view of infrastructure is as follows; we are looking for hard assets that provide an essential service to an economy, and which have a degree of price certainty built in so that we know the asset provider is going to get paid for providing the service. It is this approach that forms the basis of our thinking, says Nick Langley, co-CEO & co-CIO, RARE Infrastructure, when asked about investment types in listed infrastructure investing.
The infrastructure universe can be broadly separated into four main asset types: community and social assets, regulated assets, user pay assets, and competitive assets. You can split the universe in this manner because of the different types of assets that fall within each group, and their different characteristics as investments. It is important to do so because you’re going to get very different types of risk and return profiles based on the type of infrastructure assets that you hold, he adds.
The first group, community and social assets, is those assets that many people will mention when you ask them to name infrastructure; schools, hospitals, and prisons are some of the main examples. These are assets which have traditionally been funded with public sector involvement, and which have a clearly visible beneficial impact on society, although for investors may offer low returns with limited growth potential.
The second group is regulated assets. These are assets that operate in a regulated environment; their operations, and therefore return profiles, are impacted by the regulator of their particular industry. The key examples here are energy companies (e.g. gas and electricity utilities which manage the gas and electricity networks) and water utilities. These companies are regulated because they typically operate in markets that tend to be natural monopolies. For example, the UK, like most countries, only has one national electrical transmission network which is managed and operated by National Grid.
The third group, user pay assets, are assets that are involved with moving people or goods around an economy. For example, companies that operate road and rail networks, airports, and ports. These companies are not regulated, however they often operate with concession-based contracts; for example, a company may hold the lease to operate a particular toll road for a certain amount of time. User pay assets are more exposed to growth than regulated assets, as their revenues are typically linked to economic or population growth.
The final group consists of assets that operate in competitive markets, with exposure to wholesale prices, and typically without the security of regulation or concession contracts. An example here is energy generation and retail companies – rather than managing the energy networks, these are companies that create energy and sell energy to the end user. They are therefore subject to supply and demand risk, and potentially commodity price risk.
Which are the most interesting investments?
We focus on investing in the regulated assets and user pay assets. We do so due to the fact that these companies operate either within a defined regulatory framework or with long-term contracts in place, which underpins the return profiles of these companies. The cash flows of these companies typically stretch out decades into the future (i.e. they have a long duration), and the frameworks that they operate in means that with the appropriate expertise it is possible to estimate these cash flows, and therefore the intrinsic value of the companies, with some degree of accuracy.
This means that the main types of assets we invest in include the regulated gas, water, and electricity companies in the regulated assets space, and then toll road, rail, port, and airport companies in the user pay space.
Why are investments in infrastructure interesting?
Infrastructure has a number of characteristics that are often attractive to investors, including a strong and stable risk/return profile, inflation protection, income, lower correlation to traditional asset classes, and defensive qualities such as generally lower drawdown in falling equity markets.
Stable risk return profile and inflation protection – as infrastructure companies are typically involved in the provision of an essential service (often over a long time period), backed by hard assets, whilst having a degree of price certainty (e.g. a regulatory framework or long-term contract), we see the risk/return profiles on offer in the sector being stable over time. Whilst any return will involve some degree of risk, the nature of the asset class means that skilled investors can achieve a return that more than compensates for the risk incurred. In addition, given underlying infrastructure assets typically have some degree of inflation-linkage built in through these regulatory frameworks or long-term contracts, infrastructure provides good protection against changes in inflation. We estimate that 70% of the cashflows of companies invested in within our flagship Value strategy are either directly or indirectly linked to inflation.
Income – As discussed in more detail below, infrastructure typically provide an attractive income over time, given the recurring and growing dividends paid by many companies within the opportunity set.
Lower correlation to traditional asset classes – infrastructure can act as a good diversifier in a portfolio, given its lower correlation to asset classes such as equities and bonds. This is a result of the underlying return streams of infrastructure companies being strongly linked to the regulatory or contractual frameworks in place, rather than typical drivers of equity and bond returns. Even more importantly, we frequently see this diversification benefit increase in times of market stress, meaning that infrastructure can provide protection through diversification exactly when it is needed the most.
What yields could you expect from these investments?
The type of listed infrastructure companies we invest in provide an attractive (typically high single digit) return, whilst achieving this in a relatively low risk manner. We also see listed infrastructure providing favourable up- and down-market performance characteristics, participating in returns in up markets, but providing protection in down markets. This is a result of the defensively natured (and often income paying) regulated assets providing protection in times of market stress.
The yield on the assets we invest in varies – in the user pay assets we typically see a lower yield, however in the regulated assets we see significant and growing dividend yields over time, with figures in the 5% – 10% p.a. range not uncommon. Bringing these two asset types together, we would expect to see a yield of say 3.5% to 5.5% in a portfolio which maintained a 50:50 weighting between user pay assets and regulated assets.
Foto: Rich Brooks. Bill Gross recomienda a los banqueros centrales recordar los principios del Monopoly
In his July’s letter to investors, Bill Gross states that if “Fed Governors and Presidents understood a little bit more about Monopoly, and a tad less about outdated historical models such as the Taylor Rule and the Phillips Curve, then our economy and its future prospects might be a little better off.”
Without forgetting of other effects such as Brexit, the growing Populist movement and the possibility of what he calls de-globalization (less trade, immigration and economic growth), he highlights the $200 you get when passing go, mentioning it is like new credit, “responsible for the ongoing health of our finance-based economy. Without new credit, economic growth moves in reverse and individual player “bankruptcies” become more probable.”
He also explains how at the beginning of the game when “the bank”- which he compares to private banking, gives out the initial $1,500 growth is strong but eventually it starts to decelerate.
After explaining that money supply or “credit” growth is not the only determinant of GDP but the velocity of that money or credit is important too and that today’s “contribution of velocity to GDP growth is coming to an end and may even be creating negative growth,” he goes on to warn about that this means that “at best, a ceiling on risk asset prices (stocks, high yield bonds, private equity, real estate) and at worst, minus signs at year’s end that force investors to abandon hope for future returns compared to historic examples. Worry for now about the return “of” your money, not the return “on” it. Our Monopoly-based economy requires credit creation and if it stays low, the future losers will grow in number.” He concludes.
You can read the full letter in the following link.
Over 2000 people gathered in Atibaia during the 24th, 25th, and 26th of June to attend XP Investimentos’sixth national convention, one of the largest events held in Latin America for investment professionals. The Expert 2016 event was attended by such international fund management companies with a local presence as Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, JP Morgan AM, BNP Paribas AM, Deutsche Bank, BNY Mellon, and Mirae Assets; local fund managers with a prominent role in Brazilian and Latin American markets such as the Group’s own fund manager, XP Gestão de Recursos, thefund management companies within the Azimut Group, Questy AZ and AZ Legan, BTG Pactual, Bozano Investimentos, Votorantim Asset, and Valora Gestão de Investimentos, amongst others. In addition, banks and insurance companies such as Porto Seguro, Prudential, Sulamérica Investimentos, and Icatú Seguros, as well as the fund distributor and custodian platform, Allfunds Bank, also participated.
During this financial industry trade fair, there was also time for conferences, training sessions and presentation of awards. The event kicked off with a welcome to all attendees by Guilherme Benchimol, XP Investimentos President and Founding Partner of XP Group. Benchimol recalled the company’s beginnings, reviewing its development from the outset. Gabriel Leal, a partner at XP Group and the company’s Retail Business Director, spoke about the current situation in the markets and the future of XP Group.
Next, Abilio Diniz, current President of the Board of Directors at Península Participaçoes, spoke about the challenges currently faced by Brazil. Diniz recommended trying to understand the country’s current crisis by using the example of the ideograms that make up the word “crisis” in Mandarin Chinese: “danger” and “opportunity”. Thus, he informed of the need for: survival spirit, monitoring costs closely, assessing the crisis as a whole, avoiding to blame the crisis, looking in the mirror rather than out of the window, and anticipating, all in order to exit the crisis stronger. Abilio Diniz, who along with his father Valentim, was responsible for developing one of the country’s largest retail distribution networks, Grupo Pão de Açúcar, is also Chairman of the Board at BRF, and member of the board of directors for the Carrefour Group in Brazil.
Later, Martin Escobari, entrepreneurial and private equity investor partner in charge of General Atlantic’s operations in Latin America, shared his three rules for investing even in times of low visibility. For Escobari, the first rule is to look to the future, something relatively easy to do in markets such as Brazil which, to a certain extent, lag behind more developed markets. As an example, he mentioned the mutual funds retail distribution market in the US during the seventies, in which 80% of the funds were distributed through banks and 20% by independent firms, and its evolution to the present, in which 98% of investment funds are distributed by independent entities; while the Brazilian funds’ distribution market is almost entirely in the hands of banks, which portends a trend in the migration of savings towards independent channels. As a second rule, he recommended reacting quickly to market conditions, and finally, as a third rule, looking for resistance by investing in companies that do not depend on the country’s situation.
During his presentation, José Gallo, Director and President at Lojas Renner, spoke of the need to ‘enchant’ the client, the importance of developing an emotional attachment to the construction of a brand, and simplifying the management process as much as possible.
Finally, one of the most exciting moments of the day was when the audience stood to welcome the ‘Eternal President’, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of Brazil for two consecutive terms, from 1995 to 2003. Cardoso gave an overview of the extremism currently present in global politics, with the very recent Brexit results and the US presidential elections before the end of the year. With regard to the economic crisis currently faced by Latin America’s largest economy, Cardoso referred to the years of the global financial crisis and the performance of the financial team under Lula’s government, during which there was an increase in public spending, credit, and consumption, without an increase in investment, which in his opinion is a “Recipe for Disaster.” The former president also spoke of the need to reform the Brazilian political system, in which the more than 30 parties participating in Congress prevent setting a course for implementing the political agenda, he therefore commented on the need to return from cohabitation presidentialism to coalition presidentialism. As for the future of Brazil, Cardoso believes that the country reached a turning point where the Lava-Jato operation was a necessary and positive step for advancement. His only fear is the possible emergence of “backward” political demagogues who do not culturally perceive the need for what needs to be done. At the economic level, he trusts the dynamism of Brazilian industry and agriculture as a force to recover the path to growth. When asked if he would be willing to return to the forefront of politics, the former president’s felt honored by the request, but declined politely, joking that at 85 years of age, a return to politics would shorten his life significantly.
