André Esteves Fortune Jumps 30% to US$13 Billion in Forbes Brazil Ranking

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BRAZIL · WEALTH

Brazil’s most successful investment banker got nearly a third richer in a year — while federal police want to hear what he knew about a failed rival.

The André Esteves fortune keeps growing. The founder and chairman of BTG Pactual is Brazil’s fourth-richest person in 2026, with an estimated R$66.1 billion (about US$13 billion), according to the annual Forbes Brasil ranking of Brazilian billionaires published in late August.

The Ranking

Forbes Brasil’s fourteenth edition counts 255 Brazilian billionaires with a combined fortune of R$1.86 trillion (about US$365 billion). Almost six in ten of them — 59.2% — saw their wealth grow over the period measured.

Esteves, 58, held on to fourth place. His estimated fortune rose 29.6%, from R$51 billion (about US$10 billion) in the 2025 edition. All dollar conversions in this article use the market rate of 5.10 reais per dollar on September 10, 2026.

Above him, the podium is unchanged. Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who lives in Singapore, leads for the fourth consecutive year at R$162.9 billion (about US$31.9 billion) — despite losing 28.2% of his estimated wealth, from R$227 billion (about US$44.5 billion), as Meta shares slid in the twelve months to June 2026.

Vicky Sarfati Safra and family, of Banco Safra, are second at R$130.6 billion (about US$25.6 billion), up 8.4%. Jorge Paulo Lemann and family, of 3G Capital and AB InBev, are third at R$103.5 billion (about US$20.3 billion), up 17.6%.

The biggest climb inside the top ten belongs to Ricardo Faria, an agribusiness and mining entrepreneur. He jumped from 21st to tenth after his fortune grew 79%, from R$19.6 billion (about US$3.8 billion) to R$35.1 billion (about US$6.9 billion).

The BTG Engine

The André Esteves fortune tracks the bank he built. BTG Pactual, Latin America’s largest standalone investment bank, reported a record adjusted net income of R$15.9 billion (about US$3.1 billion) for 2025. Its shares gained 33% in the twelve months ended June 30, 2026, the period Forbes used for much of its valuation work.

Esteves is BTG’s largest individual shareholder and its chairman. He founded the bank’s predecessor in the 1980s, sold it to Swiss bank UBS in 2006, bought it back in 2009 and turned BTG Pactual into the dominant name in Brazilian investment banking, asset management and wealth management.

His career has not been linear. In 2015 he was arrested for several weeks in the Lava Jato corruption investigation and stepped down as chief executive. He was later cleared of the central accusation and returned to lead the bank as chairman — a comeback few Brazilian financiers have managed.

The Master Shadow

The André Esteves fortune milestone arrives while a police inquiry circles his industry. As The Rio Times reported this week, a federal police summons signed on August 3 and made public on September 9 calls Esteves to testify in the Banco Master investigation — together with central bank president Gabriel Galípolo, his predecessor Roberto Campos Neto and the bank’s supervision director Ailton de Aquino Santos.

All four are summoned as witnesses, not suspects, a distinction stated in the document itself. The inquiry examines how the central bank supervised Banco Master, the mid-sized lender liquidated in November 2025 after regulators uncovered a multibillion-reais hole in its books. The hearings are to be held by videoconference; no dates have been reported.

Esteves has publicly positioned BTG as a whistleblower of sorts. In May he told an audience that the central bank had failed to catch the Master fraud in time — an argument that put him at odds with the very supervisors he will now sit beside, at least virtually.

For the bank’s clients and shareholders, the practical exposure appears limited: BTG says it held no meaningful credit risk to Master, and no authority has accused Esteves or BTG of wrongdoing in the case. But the optics are uncomfortable. A banker celebrating a record fortune is also a name on a police witness list.

What the List Says

The 2026 ranking sketches a Brazilian elite in motion. Old beverage and banking fortunes — Lemann, Safra, the Moreira Salles brothers of Itaú, who sit fifth and sixth — are holding or growing. Newer money is arriving fast: Faria’s 79% jump is the list’s sharpest, and the youngest billionaire on the planet this year is Brazilian, 21-year-old WEG heiress Amelie Voigt Trejes.

Finance remains the surest ladder. Three of the top four fortunes — Safra, Lemann and Esteves — were built in or around banking and investment. Esteves is the only self-made banker among them, and the only one whose fortune grew while his name appeared on a federal police summons.

For foreign readers, the list is also a map of where Brazilian capital concentrates: technology held abroad, beer and retail held globally, and a financial sector that keeps compounding at home — through record profits, rising markets and, occasionally, the fallout of a rival’s collapse.