(Bloomberg) - By Cristiane Lucchesi
August 2, 2021, 8:00 AM GMT-3
Financial-services firms represent seven of 10 transactions
Seneca Evercore, with about 20 employees, plans more hiring
Daniel WainsteinSource: Seneca Evercore
Seneca Evercore, a merger-and-acquisition advisory boutique in Brazil, doubled the number of transactions it worked on in the past 12 months as the market booms.
The firm has advised on 10 deals in 12 months through July, compared with five in the previous 12 months, according to Daniel Wainstein, a managing partner at the Sao Paulo-based firm. Seven of the past 12 months’ assignments were in the financial-services sector.
“You see many new players doing investment advising, credit, asset- and wealth-management, and they are attracting interest from bigger firms as they gain more clients,” Wainstein said in an interview.
Total M&A transactions surged to $54 billion in Brazil so far this year, four times more than in the same period of 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as companies raise money on capital markets to finance takeovers.
New York-based Evercore Inc. said in July it bought a 20% stake in Seneca Evercore after a year of maintaining a “strategic alliance” with the company. Wainstein and Rodrigo Mello, former co-heads of the Brazilian unit of Greenhill & Co., acquired that company’s platform along with other partners, renaming it Seneca Evercore.
The boutique started with 15 employees and now has 20. The plan is to hire more, Wainstein said, as demand for advisory services grows.
Seneca Evercore worked for the independent investment-advisory office Monte Bravo Agente Autonomo de Investimentos s/s Ltda. in the acquisition of a minority stake of the firm by XP Inc., Brazil’s biggest brokerage. It also advised alternative-investment firm Jive Investments in another minority-stake acquisition by XP. Both transactions were announced in June.
Other deals include advising asset manager Perfin Administracao de Recursos Ltda. in a minority-stake acquisition by Banco BTG Pactual SA, completed in June.
Evercore, an independent investment-banking advisory firm, has invested in a Brazilian firm before. It bought a 50% stake in G5 in 2010 for $20 million and invested more over the years, according to an earn-out formula. Evercore converted G5’s equity into hybrid debt in 2017, according to a filing.