BM&F’s 2008 merger with São Paulo’s Bovespa created the world’s third largest stock exchange, catapulting the group to a position of global influence, where it is courted by regional neighbours and American behemoths alike. Tom Osborn meets the man driving BM&F Bovespa’s push for international expansion: chief business officer Paulo de Sousa Oliveira.
“The only problem that Brazil faced during the crisis was with the OTC markets,” says Paulo de Sousa Oliveira, chief business officer of BM&F Bovespa. “In the exchanges, we have tough self-regulation.”
The unusual structure of Brazil’s financial markets was little known outside the country until 2008. But in the ferment of ideas that has followed the financial crisis, the Brazilian model has attracted considerable attention.
The country combines vibrant and vigorous markets with a strict regulatory regime, in which all over the counter derivative and corporate bond trades...