02Macro, politics & other
BR–CHMacro, politics & other
SMI tops 14,800 intraday for the first time while the Ibovespa falls for a fourth straight session
On 29 Oct the SMI rose 1.21% to 14,756.86 and traded above 14,800 for the first time intraday, led by Sandoz, Amrize and UBS. In São Paulo the Ibovespa fell 1.06% to 169,186.42, its fourth straight loss, and the dollar rose to R$5.387. Brazilian investors are waiting for the new government's economic plan and remain worried about public finances and rates.
Why it matters for LIDE membersSwiss and Brazilian assets keep diverging after the election, which affects the timing of cross-border allocation and FX decisions.
CHMacro, politics & other
SNB posts CHF 44.2bn profit for the first nine months of 2026
The Swiss National Bank reported a nine-month profit of CHF 44.2bn on 30 Oct, implying about CHF 19bn in the third quarter after CHF 25.2bn in the first half. The result was driven by a CHF 43.3bn gain on foreign-currency positions and a CHF 1.2bn valuation gain on gold, with the gold volume unchanged. The SNB repeated that its results swing heavily with markets, so interim figures say little about the full year.
Why it matters for LIDE membersA large profit raises the chance of a full 2026 payout to the Confederation and cantons, which bears on Swiss public finances and cantonal tax policy.
BRMacro, politics & other
Markets now price a Selic hold at 13.75% at next week's Copom
B3 Copom options imply about a 63% probability that the Selic is held at 13.75% on 3–4 Nov, 28% for a 25bp cut and 4% for a 50bp cut (26 Oct reference prices). Before the 25 Oct runoff, a 25bp cut was the favourite at about 76%. Analysts link the shift to fiscal and inflation uncertainty after Lula's re-election.
Why it matters for LIDE membersA pause would keep BRL carry high and delay relief for Brazilian borrowers and equity valuations, which bears on allocation decisions in the corridor.
BRMacro, politics & otherUnconfirmed report – Times Brasil / Valor Econômico (names for Finance are speculative)
Lula's fourth-term economic team: fiscal and developmentalist camps clash; Finance Minister choice still open
Finance Minister Dario Durigan and Planning Minister Bruno Moretti back continued fiscal adjustment, and Durigan said on 27 Oct that the government is studying a wider share of the budget that can be frozen, which needs Congress. Developmentalists, including former minister Guido Mantega, push back against spending restraint and high rates. No appointments have been made; reported names for Finance include Piauí governor Rafael Fonteles, Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin or keeping Durigan.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe Finance pick will be the main signal for fiscal credibility, the Selic path and BRL risk in the new term.
CHMacro, politics & other
KOF barometer eases to 107.6 in October but the Swiss outlook stays robust
ETH Zurich's KOF Economic Barometer fell 1.5 points to 107.6 in October from 109.1 in September, still well above its long-term average of 100. Consumer demand and financial-services indicators softened, while manufacturing signals such as the export outlook and production improved.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe reading supports the SNB's 0% stance before its December assessment and a solid backdrop for Swiss exporters active in Brazil.
05Private banking & wealth management
CHPrivate banking & wealth management
Julius Baer starts a CHF 600m share buyback on 2 November
Julius Baer will begin buying back up to CHF 600m of its shares on Monday 2 Nov, aiming to finish within about a year; the shares will be cancelled under the capital band approved at the April 2026 AGM. The start follows the end, in late September, of FINMA's enforcement case over the bank's Benko-related private-debt exposures and Russian politically exposed clients.
Why it matters for LIDE membersSwitzerland's largest pure-play private bank is returning capital after a major supervisory case, a benchmark for private-bank valuations.
CHPrivate banking & wealth management
Swiss independent wealth managers keep consolidating: Align leads hiring, ASWM alliance grows to 42 members
A commercial-register analysis by wealthmanager.info for finews counts 30 senior moves between FINMA-licensed institutions from January to September 2026, with Align Private Wealth (Aquila Group) taking seven, Eqitron four and Orion Capital three, and the pace rising each quarter. Separately, the Alliance of Swiss Wealth Managers adds Geneva-based Targa 5 Advisors and GSK & Partners from 1 Nov, reaching 42 members with more than CHF 155bn under management.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt shows where Swiss independent managers are scaling, useful for Brazilian families choosing a Swiss adviser or custody set-up.
06Private Market
BRPrivate MarketTaxes & wealth planningUnconfirmed report – Bloomberg (anonymous sources on the Shell stake and fuel-unit sale; tax-deal terms confirmed)
Raízen settles R$22.4bn tax bill ahead of today's restructuring vote; Shell said to keep under 20% of the fuel unit
Raízen agreed a settlement with the Receita Federal and PGFN that extinguishes R$22.4bn of tax debt: R$8.5bn of fines and interest are waived, up to R$5.7bn of tax losses can be used and R$2.5bn is paid upfront. The deal was a precondition for the out-of-court restructuring of about R$65bn of debt, which converts 45% of it into equity. According to Bloomberg sources, creditors will end up with more than 80% of the company and Shell with under 20% of the fuel-distribution unit, which will seek a partner after today's shareholder vote.
Why it matters for LIDE membersOne of Brazil's largest corporate clean-ups turns creditors into owners of a major energy and agribusiness group and opens the fuel unit to strategic and private-equity buyers.
BRPrivate Market
Vale's Q3 profit roughly halves to about US$1.25bn on weaker iron ore; copper earnings jump 66%
Vale reported Q3 2026 net income of about US$1.25bn against US$2.69bn a year earlier, on revenue of US$10.6bn (+2%), according to Gazeta Mercantil and InfoMoney; Folhapress gives a 56% fall in reais to R$6.4bn. Pro-forma EBITDA fell 20% to US$3.51bn on a lower realised iron ore price (US$85.1/t), higher costs and freight and a US$322m Samarco provision adjustment. Copper adjusted EBITDA rose 66% to US$1.02bn.
Why it matters for LIDE membersVale is a core holding for Brazil-focused investors; the drop points to smaller dividends as copper becomes the growth story.
CHPrivate MarketPrivate banking & wealth management
LGT Capital Partners names Sascha Gruber CEO; founder Roberto Paganoni moves to the holding board
Sascha Gruber, at the firm since 2002, will become CEO of LGT Capital Partners on 1 January 2027, subject to regulatory approval, succeeding Roberto Paganoni, who has led it since its founding in 1998. LGT CP manages more than US$120bn for over 750 institutional clients and says its strategy is unchanged. Gruber helped build the private-markets and secondaries business and the firm's expansion in North and South America.
Why it matters for LIDE membersA leadership change at one of Switzerland's largest private-markets managers, under a CEO who worked on its Americas growth, matters for Brazilian pension funds and family offices allocating to Swiss managers.
BRPrivate MarketAI & Infrastructure
Brazilian retail-AI start-up Revi raises R$8.3m in a round led by ABSeed
Revi builds AI agents that pull together retail data from physical and online channels to steer marketing campaigns. SaaS specialist ABSeed led the R$8.3m round with GR8 Ventures, and existing investors Veredas Partners, Stamina VC, Verve Capital and Crivo increased their stakes.
Why it matters for LIDE membersBrazilian VC keeps backing applied AI right after the election, even at small round sizes.
07Crypto & digital assets
BRCrypto & digital assets
Binance suffers the largest crypto hack on record, about US$6.3bn; withdrawals paused
Binance halted withdrawals on 29 Oct after attackers drained its hot wallets; it puts the loss at about US$6.3bn and says customer losses will be covered from its SAFU fund and own resources. About US$3bn has been frozen, including roughly US$1.5bn of USDT by Tether and US$800m of USDC by Circle, and the co-CEO expects withdrawals to restart within 48 hours. Binance Brasil told users their funds are safe; loss estimates from tracking firms range from US$5.87bn (Arkham) to about US$6.4bn (Chainalysis), and Bitcoin briefly fell below US$77,000.
Why it matters for LIDE membersBinance has just applied for a Brazilian SPSAV licence, so custody and hot-wallet controls move to the centre of the BCB review and of any bank's or family office's exchange due diligence.
BRCrypto & digital assetsFintechPrivate banking & wealth managementUnconfirmed report – private Cainvest tracker; no official BCB list yet
BCB crypto-licence deadline day: tracker counts about 40 applicants, with Coinbase and Foxbit among the latest
Today, 30 Oct, is the last day for crypto firms already operating in Brazil to file phase one of their SPSAV authorisation request; those that do not file have 30 days to wind down. The private Cainvest tracker listed 38 firms on 29 Oct and about 40 by the evening, up from 22 a day earlier, with Coinbase and Foxbit among the new filers; Bradesco and B3 are reported but not confirmed. Revolut (crypto only), Bitso (retail), Coinext, NovaDAX, Bity and Digitra.com are exiting or winding down, and filing is not approval.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe licence list will decide which Brazilian crypto counterparties banks, wealth managers and Swiss institutions can keep working with.
BRCrypto & digital assetsFintechUnconfirmed report – legal interpretation by a market specialist (Livecoins); BCB has not clarified
After today's deadline, the 6 Nov bank cut-off under Resolução BCB 589 is the real test for crypto brokers
From 6 Nov, Resolução BCB 589 bars BCB-authorised institutions from carrying out or 'enabling' crypto operations with unauthorised providers. One market specialist reads the current wording as dropping the earlier protection for firms with a pending filing, which could let banks cut real-denominated deposit and withdrawal rails to brokers that have filed but are not yet approved. The BCB has not clarified the term, and firms that miss today's deadline have until 29 Nov to wind down.
Why it matters for LIDE membersMembers with balances at Brazilian brokers, or banks serving them, should check access and withdrawal paths before 6 Nov.
CHCrypto & digital assetsPrivate banking & wealth managementFintech
Swiss Bankers Association wants banks to issue franc stablecoins under their existing banking licence
On 29 Oct the Swiss Bankers Association (SBVg) presented a position paper on a Swiss-franc stablecoin, with chief economist Martin Hess saying 'the point of no return' has been reached. It broadly backs the Federal Council's planned FINIG revision but rejects the draft rule forcing banks to issue through a separate payment-instrument-institution subsidiary, and asks for more flexible reserve rules and risk-based anti-money-laundering rules. UBS, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, ZKB, BCV and Sygnum have been testing use cases in a sandbox with SIX and Twint since September, with results due in December.
Why it matters for LIDE membersThe final rules will decide whether tokenised franc payments, including Brazil–Switzerland flows, are run by Swiss banks or by foreign issuers.
08AI & Infrastructure
BRAI & InfrastructureUniversity spin-offs & innovation labs
Federal University of Goiás AI centre releases Lumi, a free open-source Portuguese LLM
Ceia-UFG, the AI centre of excellence at the Federal University of Goiás, presented Lumi at AI Brasil Experience 2026 in São Paulo: an open-source, 4-billion-parameter language model adapted to Brazilian Portuguese and available on Hugging Face. The centre pitches it as a free base for companies to build AI applications without paid foreign services. The Goiás state government has put about R$91m into Ceia-UFG, which says its work has helped attract more than R$500m of private investment.
Why it matters for LIDE membersA university-built sovereign model gives companies in Brazil a low-cost base and invites comparison with Switzerland's open Apertus model.
CHAI & Infrastructure
Lausanne start-up Giotto launches two reasoning models, Solo and Alto, built for sovereign deployment
Giotto released two Swiss-developed reasoning models: Solo runs on a single GPU and Alto on eight Nvidia B300 GPUs, with extra compute spent at inference rather than on ever-larger training. They can run in a European shared cloud, a dedicated cloud in Swiss or European data centres, or on-premises, which Giotto says avoids dependence on US cloud infrastructure. Free access, apps and an API are available; no benchmarks or pricing were published.
Why it matters for LIDE membersRegulated firms that cannot send data to US clouds gain another Swiss-hosted AI option, though performance claims are not yet independently verified.
BRAI & InfrastructurePrivate Market
PwC: Brazil's data-centre investment could double to about US$60bn a year by 2050
Brazil-focused coverage of PwC's Global Data Centre Outlook 2026–2050, produced with Oxford Economics, puts current data-centre investment in Brazil at about US$30bn a year and projects roughly US$60bn a year by 2050 if AI adoption accelerates and governments and regulated sectors require critical data to be hosted locally. Energy, connectivity, regulation, chip access and licensing speed remain the deciding factors.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt sizes the infrastructure opportunity for corridor investors now that the Redata incentive regime is in force.
CHAI & Infrastructure
Swiss public-sector study: replacing Microsoft 365 would take 4–8 years and cost 7–8 times the annual budget
A study by Eraneos for Digitale Verwaltung Schweiz, based on input from seven Swiss administrations, finds a quick replacement of Microsoft 365 'not realistic'. A switch would take 4–8 years with one-off costs of 7–8 times the annual M365 budget, roughly CHF 25–30m for an administration of about 6,000 staff, while running costs would stay about the same and alternatives such as openDesk still lack features.
Why it matters for LIDE membersIt puts real numbers on the cost of digital sovereignty for any board weighing a cloud exit or sovereign-cloud strategy.