Context: How B3 (Brasil, Bolsa, Balcao) works, and what it makes issuers disclose · Brazil on the LatAm Power Map
BR Partners is the investment bank that Brazilian entrepreneurs call when they want to sell a company, raise capital, or navigate a crisis — and it has never posted a losing year since it opened in 2009.
| Full name | BR Advisory Partners Participações S.A. |
| Ticker / exchange | BRBI11 – B3 (São Paulo) |
| Headquarters | São Paulo, SP, Brazil |
| Sector | Financial Services – Capital Markets |
| Employees | Not disclosed in available sources |
| Market value (market cap) | ~R$1.74bn (~US$337m) |
| Net revenue proxy (gross profit, 2024) | R$437m (~US$84.6m) |
| Net profit (2024) | R$193.7m (~US$37.5m) |
| Net margin (on gross profit, 2024) | 44.3% (our calculation) |
| Return on equity (ROE) | 21.4% |
| Price-to-earnings (P/E) | 33× |
| Dividend yield | Not disclosed in EODHD data |
| Website | brpartners.com.br |
What it is
BR Partners is Brazil’s largest independent investment bank, founded in 2009 by Ricardo Lacerda, whose earlier career took him through Goldman Sachs and Citigroup in Brazil and New York. It does not take deposits or run branches; instead it earns fees advising companies on mergers and acquisitions, helping them issue debt or equity, and running a treasury desk that structures financial products for corporate clients.
Its services span M&A advisory, capital markets, board and shareholder advisory, special-situation restructuring, pre-IPO work, and privatisations, alongside originating and distributing asset-backed securities, real estate funds, and structured credit. It also manages money for wealthy families through a wealth-management arm.
Who owns it
The listed holding company, BR Advisory Partners Participações S.A., operates as a subsidiary of BR Partners Holdco Participações S.A. — the vehicle through which the founding partners hold their stake. Institutional investors hold roughly 13.9% of units outstanding (EODHD), with the balance split between the founders and the public free float.
The bank debuted on B3 in 2021 to strengthen its capital markets and treasury platform. In 2023 the Brapinvest funds — the founders’ holding vehicles — conducted a secondary offering of approximately 16.8 million units, reducing their direct holding and broadening the free float.
Who runs it
Ricardo Lacerda has been CEO and founding partner of BR Partners since 2009. Before that he was head of Citigroup’s investment bank in Latin America and Brazil, and before Citi he was CEO of Goldman Sachs in Brazil and a vice-president at the Goldman Sachs investment bank in New York.
Lilian Crestana, who brings fifteen years of investment-banking experience from Unibanco, BTG Pactual, and Banco ABC, and who most recently was CFO of Gerdau’s diversification unit, serves as CFO. Lacerda was recognised by The M&A Advisor with its 2025 Leadership Award.
The money, in plain words
A note on the numbers: like all investment banks, BR Partners runs a large treasury book — buying and selling financial instruments — whose gross turnover inflates the stated “total revenue” line to R$7.4bn (US$1.4 bn) (2024). The meaningful figure for judging the business is gross profit — what is left after the cost of those instruments — which was R$437m (~US$84.6m) in 2024, up 39.6% from R$313m (US$61 mn) in 2023 (our calculation).
Of that R$437m, R$193.7m (~US$37.5m) reached net profit in 2024 — a net margin of 44.3% on net revenue (our calculation), exceptionally high for any financial business. Net profit itself grew 24.9% year on year (our calculation), continuing a streak that BR Partners itself says has never included a loss-making year.
For every real of owners’ equity, the bank earned about 21 cents last year — a return on equity of 21.4%, well above the cost of capital in Brazil’s high-interest-rate environment. The stock trades at 33 times earnings (price-to-earnings of 33×), pricing in continued strong growth.
Total assets stand at R$17.5bn (~US$3.38bn), mostly the treasury book; equity backing the whole structure is R$783m (~US$151.6m), implying a funded balance sheet typical of an investment bank.
What it is doing now
Vinicius, the investor-relations officer who led the IPO in 2021 and the follow-on in 2023, also led the bank’s Nasdaq listing in 2025 — an ADR programme that broadens BR Partners’ reach to US institutional capital. The bank’s subsidiary, BR Partners Banco de Investimento, recently issued Financial Letters of R$124.2 million (US$24 mn), part of ongoing balance-sheet expansion to fund the treasury and structured-credit business.
CEO Lacerda said he was highly satisfied with a new wealth-management unit created in the second half of 2023, describing the bank’s growth strategy as modular — adding new pillars only once existing ones are generating returns. The Q1 2026 earnings release, scheduled for 7 May 2026, is the next major public data point.
What to watch
- M&A cycle: advisory fees are the highest-margin business; a sustained pickup in Brazilian deal activity directly widens margins.
- Interest rates: Brazil’s high benchmark rate (Selic) pressures equity issuance but boosts treasury and structured-credit revenues — the bank’s balance of businesses matters here.
- Nasdaq ADR traction: wider foreign-investor access could re-rate a stock that trades at a discount to global boutique-bank peers on a price-to-book basis.
- Founder concentration: with Ricardo Lacerda still CEO and dominant shareholder after 16 years, succession and governance remain long-term questions the market has not yet fully priced.
Sources
This is news, not investment advice.
Part of LatAm Company Intelligence
This company profile belongs to The Rio Times' research on every listed company and exchange in Latin America and the Caribbean. Browse the full intelligence hub →
Read More from The Rio Times