02Macro, politics & other
BRMacro, politics & other
Brazil markets steady on day two: real recovers 1%, Ibovespa slips again, Treasury buys back more NTN-Bs
On 27 Oct the dollar fell 1.07% to R$5.349 as traders unwound part of Monday's spike, while the Ibovespa lost another 0.51% to 175,710 points, its lowest level since August. DI rates eased by 34–41bp, and the Treasury ran a second extraordinary NTN-B buyback (2030–2045 maturities) and cancelled the LFT auction, leaving no bond sales this week. Monday's buybacks totalled about R$14.8bn (R$7.1bn NTN-F plus R$7.7bn NTN-B).
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe shock is stabilising rather than spiralling, which matters for the timing of BRL hedges, local bond positions and Brazil allocations.
BRMacro, politics & other
Moody's keeps its view of Brazil unchanged after the election but says the debt path needs reform
Moody's said Lula's re-election does not change Brazil's sovereign credit assessment, but it expects only gradual fiscal adjustment, with gross debt at about 83% of GDP and nominal deficits of 8–9% of GDP. It estimates that a primary surplus of 2–3% of GDP would be needed to stabilise debt, and says the new economic team could bring a firmer commitment. Fitch had already warned on 26 Oct of higher fiscal uncertainty and said it will watch the team's composition.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThere is no rating action yet, but agencies have made the economic team and early fiscal measures the test for sovereign and corporate spreads.
BRMacro, politics & other
Galípolo: the BCB will intervene in FX only if the market becomes dysfunctional; he is not a candidate for Finance
Presenting the Financial Stability Report on 27 Oct, BCB president Gabriel Galípolo said there is no fixed rule for FX intervention and the bank acts only when it sees dysfunction. He declined to comment on the election or next week's Copom, said he is not being considered for the Finance Ministry and will stay until his term ends in 2028, and noted that filling the two vacant board seats is up to Lula.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt confirms continuity at the BCB ahead of Copom on 3–4 Nov and that the floating real will not be capped.
BRMacro, politics & otherUnconfirmed report – Reuters (anonymous sources)
Alckmin and Fonteles reported to lead the Finance Ministry race; Durigan promises a fiscal-target bill by year-end
Three sources quoted by Reuters name Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin and Piauí governor Rafael Fonteles as frontrunners for Finance, with current minister Dario Durigan not ruled out and Lula expected to take his time. NeoFeed reports that Durigan says a bill will go to Congress by year-end so the government can pursue the centre of the 2027 fiscal target, which would allow larger spending freezes.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe finance minister's name and the first fiscal signal are the main drivers of the risk premium, the real and the Copom path.
BRMacro, politics & other
PL recognises Lula's win; Flávio Bolsonaro drops the annulment bid but will challenge Lula's candidacy in court
Flávio Bolsonaro's Partido Liberal said it recognises the result proclaimed by the TSE, while questioning campaign-period social benefits. Flávio has dropped the request to annul the election but says he will ask the courts to annul Lula's candidacy for abuse of power and will lead the opposition; he has not formally conceded.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt lowers the risk of an institutional crisis, though litigation remains a political-risk factor for investors.
05Private banking & wealth management
CHPrivate banking & wealth managementPrivate Market
UBS Q3 profit rises 8% to USD 2.69bn with record wealth inflows; buyback brought forward as the capital fight hardens
UBS reported 3Q26 net profit of USD 2.69bn, up 8% year on year and slightly below consensus, with underlying pre-tax profit of USD 4.08bn and a CET1 ratio of 14.7%. Global Wealth Management took in a record USD 55.1bn of net new assets, and the USD 3bn buyback is now due to finish by the 4Q26 results in February 2027. UBS estimates that the Council of States' version of the capital rules (90% CET1 deduction for foreign subsidiaries) would require about USD 16bn of extra CET1; Ermotti called it 'very concerning', and the National Council takes up the rules in December.
Why it matters for LIDE membersUBS is the largest wealth manager for Brazilian HNW clients in Switzerland, and the Lex UBS outcome will shape its capital, distributions and possibly its headquarters.
BRPrivate banking & wealth management
Santander Brasil misses Q3 estimates: recurring profit down 28%, ROAE at 11.9%
Santander Brasil posted 3Q26 recurring net profit of R$2.9bn, down 28% year on year and about 8% below the Bloomberg consensus of R$3.16bn, while ROAE fell to 11.9% against 12.7% expected. Management signalled that a more consistent recovery in profitability may only come in early 2027, with credit costs still the main concern.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt is the first big-bank result since the election shock and points to rising credit stress ahead of Itaú (3 Nov) and BTG (10 Nov).
06Private Market
BRPrivate Market
Advent closes about USD 30bn of new funds and signals more capital for Brazil after the election
Advent International closed its GPE XI buyout fund at about USD 27bn, above its USD 26bn target, and with a first mid-market fund of USD 3bn or more the raise totals about USD 30bn. Advent has invested over USD 6.6bn in Brazil since 1997 across 35 deals, recently including Natura and Skyone, and says the raise expands its capacity in Brazil and Latin America; no country allocation was disclosed.
Why it matters for LIDE membersWith about USD 6bn of share offerings frozen, private equity becomes a key source of capital and exits for Brazilian companies and family groups.
CHPrivate MarketPrivate banking & wealth management
Pictet Alternative Advisors buys seven historic residential buildings in central Milan
Pictet Alternative Advisors acquired seven buildings in central Milan, about 26,000 m² with roughly 150 apartments plus retail, under 'Project Galileo', with Kryalos SGR as manager and UniCredit as sole lender. The price was not disclosed; PAA managed about USD 58bn in alternatives at end-June, about USD 5bn of it in real estate.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt shows a Geneva private bank putting client capital directly into European real estate, a strategy open to its Brazilian clients.
07Crypto & digital assets
BRCrypto & digital assetsFintech
Itaú becomes the first bank to formalise crypto brokerage with the BCB as Mercado Bitcoin and Ripio file ahead of the 30 Oct deadline
On 27 Oct Itaú Unibanco notified the Central Bank of its crypto intermediation and custody services; as an already-authorised bank it uses a notification route rather than a new SPSAV authorisation. The same day Mercado Bitcoin, which has absorbed Bity's users and Bitso's Brazilian retail base, and Ripio filed for authorisation. A Cainvest monitor cited by Bitnoticias counts 17 applicants so far.
Why it matters for LIDE membersBrazil's crypto market is concentrating in licensed, bank-grade players, who will be members' counterparties once unlicensed providers are cut off in November.
CHCrypto & digital assetsPrivate banking & wealth management
Swiss Structured Products Association admits Zug tokenisation firm TVL Capital
The SSPA has admitted Zug-based TVL Capital as a partner member, bringing it to 58 members that cover more than 95% of Swiss structured-products volume. TVL provides technology for banks to issue Chain-Traded Products, register securities under Swiss DLT law, where issuer and payoff stay the same and only infrastructure and settlement move on-chain.
Why it matters for LIDE membersStructured products are core to Swiss private banking for Brazilian clients, and tokenised issuance could widen distribution and speed up settlement.
08AI & Infrastructure
BRAI & InfrastructurePrivate Market
Lula puts a 'Brazilian AI' and renewable-powered data centres at the core of his fourth-term plan
After his re-election Lula said Brazil should use its renewable-energy potential to attract data centres, reserve part of their capacity for Brazilian data and build a domestic AI so as not to depend on US or Chinese models. Coverage of the government plan lists incentives tied to committing compute to the Brazilian market, national supercomputers, Portuguese-language models and energy, water and grid conditions. No concrete regulatory mechanisms or investor requirements have been set yet.
Why it matters for LIDE membersData-sovereignty conditions will shape the economics of hyperscaler, colocation and energy deals in Brazil, a market Swiss infrastructure investors and suppliers are eyeing.
CHAI & InfrastructurePrivate Market
Green buys a former ABB site in Birr (AG) for a new data-centre campus
Swiss data-centre operator Green has bought the roughly 250,000 m² Grossacher/Grändel site in Birr, Aargau, which ABB had held as a strategic reserve, and plans to develop a campus there in stages. Waste heat would feed process or district heating, closed-loop cooling would avoid water use, and the facilities could supply balancing power to the Swiss grid; capacity, investment and timing were not disclosed.
Why it matters for LIDE membersLarge sites for compute are scarce in Switzerland, and the grid-services and heat-reuse model is a useful comparison for Brazil's renewable-linked data-centre conditions.
BRAI & Infrastructure
Anatel's 5G oversight group approves a R$375m federal AI data centre, to be run by Telebras
Gaispi, the Anatel group that supervises 5G auction obligations, approved a proposal to build an AI-ready data centre for federal bodies with leftover auction funds: a 2 MW AI module with 48 GPUs and liquid cooling, plus a colocation module. The federal government would own it and Telebras would operate it; it still needs approval from Anatel's board and has a 12-month target.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt is the first concrete public sovereign-compute project under Lula's AI agenda and signals where public GPU and cooling procurement is heading.
CHAI & InfrastructureUniversity spin-offs & innovation labs
Analysis: Switzerland is a top AI research hub per capita, but its AI companies keep going to foreign buyers
A data analysis by Hugging Face engineer Joel Niklaus, published by Startupticker, ranks Switzerland third worldwide for top AI conference papers per million inhabitants and first for AI researchers and inventors per capita. It attracts comparatively little private AI capital, though, and 34 of 40 documented acquisitions of Swiss AI companies since 2010 went to foreign buyers, 22 of them American; a Zurich strategist counters that research output is not the same as technological leadership.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe gap between Swiss AI talent and Swiss AI capital is an opening for family offices and Brazilian strategic investors looking at ETH/EPFL-origin deals.
CHAI & InfrastructurePrivate Market
Basel start-up Atlas Bio comes out of stealth with USD 12.5m for AI-simulated clinical trials
Atlas Bio, founded in 2024, has raised a USD 10m seed round led by Creandum on top of a USD 2.5m pre-seed from First Momentum Ventures and LEA Partners. Its foundation model, trained on about 2 million human-tissue RNA readouts, simulates drug effects on virtual patient cohorts to de-risk Phase II trials and cut animal studies; the company says it works with a top-10 pharma group.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt shows AI moving into the Basel pharma cluster, of interest to Brazilian health groups and life-science investors.
CHAI & InfrastructurePrivate banking & wealth management
IFZ/HSLU study: Finnova and Avaloq dominate Swiss core banking, and banks doubt vendors' AI offers
The second IFZ/HSLU core-banking study surveyed 63 IT heads at banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein: Finnova is used by 63% (67% in 2023), Avaloq by 22% (up from 17%) and Temenos by 3%. AI is now banks' second most important requirement after interfaces, but respondents are very sceptical of what vendors have delivered so far.
Why it matters for LIDE membersAI capability in Swiss private banking is being capped by a two-vendor core-system market, useful context for bank tech budgets and AI vendors targeting Swiss banks.
09Fintech
BRFintechCrypto & digital assets
Central Bank studies a 'supervised exit' for about 240 institutions, mostly fintechs, that miss new minimum capital
At the Financial Stability Report press conference, BCB director Ailton de Aquino said about 240 institutions, including 56 payment institutions and 53 direct-credit companies, do not meet the new capital floors under Joint Resolution 14. Closing the gap would take R$584.5m, about 0.03% of system reference equity; the exit proposal still needs internal review and a CMN decision. The BCB also said about 20 payment-institution and crypto-provider licence applications are pending.
Why it matters for LIDE membersA capital-driven shake-out of small fintechs points to consolidation and M&A, and to counterparty risk for investors exposed to Brazilian fintech.
BRFintech
Analysis: fintechs face higher capital, tax and BaaS deadlines as Lula's new term begins
A Finsiders Brasil feature sets out the post-election calendar for fintechs: minimum capital for payment institutions rises in stages from R$1m to at least R$9.2m by January 2028, BaaS rules apply from 31 Dec 2026, and CSLL for payment institutions climbs towards 15% by 2028. According to the BCB, applications for new institutions have fallen from about 15 to 2 a month; quoted lawyers expect continuity at the BCB but uncertain legislation.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt sets out the regulatory and tax calendar that will drive fintech valuations after this week's ADR sell-off.