By Caitlin Hogg
A man of multiple titles, Sao-Paolo based Roberto Egydio Setúbal, who will be sixty-years-old in 2015 is the CEO, Director, President of Itaú Unibanco Holding SA, as well as the Vice Chairman of the board. He attended the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paolo and attained a Masters degree in Engineering through Stanford University.
The story of Roberto’s success began with his father, Olavo Setúbal. An engineer first and foremost, Olavo was asked to take over management of a then very small Federal Credit Bank. Ranked 150th out of the 200 existent banks in Brazil small, in fact. He and Roberto grew the bank through acquisitions to be the second largest in the country, giving his blessing to merge with Unibanco shortly before his passing in 2008.
This in mind, Roberto can take a huge amount of credit for the success of Banco Itaú since then, having steered Itaú through several social, political, and economic changes in Brazil, not forgetting the privatization of banks.
The fourth born of seven children, in an interview for the Financial Times Roberto insists that he was always driven to negotiate. There is no doubt that those negotiation skills have come to mighty good use throughout his presidency of the company, considering that he has presided over a 30-fold increase in Itaú’s market capitalisation, overseeing a capital jump from $ 2 billion when he took office in 1994, to $100 billion in 2011, making Itaú one of the top 10 largest banks in the world by market value.
Setúbal is to be one of the five co-chairs of Davos 2015, an exciting piece of news for the 40-or-so Brazilian executives expected to attend this year.
