Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Banco Espirito Santo Investimento SA is positioning itself in Brazil to win contracts for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, teaming up with construction companies that will bid to work on more than a dozen stadiums.

The investment arm of Portugal’s largest bank by market value already is advising Construtora Norberto Odebrecht SA, a Brazilian engineering company, ahead of a planned tender for one stadium, Jose Maria Ricciardi, the Lisbon-based company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.

“We are already working with some important construction companies in Brazil for some stadiums,” Ricciardi said in an interview yesterday in New York. “They are going to reform or do something to like 12 to 14 new stadiums in different cities of Brazil, and then for the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.”

BES Investimento, a shareholder in Brazil’s second-largest non-state bank Banco Bradesco SA, gets about 30 percent of its revenue from the country. The bank is interested in helping finance projects for Brazil’s sporting events after working on the rebuilding of the English soccer stadiums of Wembley and the Arsenal Emirates in London and the Manchester City stadium, Ricciardi said. The bank also advised London on its winning bid to host the 2012 Olympics, he said.

Rio beat out Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo for the 2016 Olympic Games last week with a bid proposing investments of $11.1 billion. A government infrastructure program has committed as much as 70 percent of that, according to the Rio Olympics Committee. The organizers need to raise the remaining 30 percent and expect ticket sales and sponsorships to yield $2.82 billion.

Media Events

“These are the most important media events in the world, with the largest audience in the world,” Ricciardi said. “Brazil now is living a new stage of its development and is going to be one of the pushers of the world economy recovery.”

Luciano Coutinho, president of Brazil’s state development bank known as BNDES, said in August the lender may co-finance the reconstruction of stadiums for the 2014 World Cup with private institutions, Agencia Estado reported. Brazil has no soccer stadium ready for the soccer tournament, Sports Minister Orlando Silva said Sept. 8.

Ricciardi was in New York to visit the company’s branch opened in June that now employs 40 people. BES Investimento is about to buy an investment bank in the U.K. to strengthen its presence in New York and London, Ricciardi said. He declined to provide more details.

“We want to use the New York platform to distribute our products from the Latin American world, mainly from Brazil,” Ricciardi said. “The foreign capital is flowing inside Brazil every day.”

Selling Shares

Banco Espirito Santo SA, BES Investimento’s parent company, has climbed 24 percent this year compared with a 38 percent gain in Portugal’s benchmark PSI-20 Index. The bank reported in July that first-half net income fell 6.8 percent to 246.2 million euros ($363 million). Brazil contributed 18.3 million euros in second-quarter operating income, up 57 percent from a year earlier.

Selling shares in Brazil is “a real possibility” for the Portuguese bank at a later date, Ricciardi said. The bank was among the co-leaders of the sale of shares this week by the Brazilian unit of Spain’s Banco Santander SA that is raising 14.1 billion reais ($8.1 billion).

BES Investimento also is advising Odebrecht and Brazilian construction company Construtora Camargo Correa SA on bids for transportation and hospital projects in the U.S. and Canada, Ricciardi said.

The bank has had operations for 30 years in Brazil, the world’s biggest Portuguese-speaking country and one of the four largest emerging markets together with Russia, India and China. BES Investimento also is focusing on Angola, another Portuguese- speaking country, and other African nations, he said.

“The world development from now to the future is going to be pushed by what we call the BRICs,” Ricciardi said. “And that is what is going to help the first world, if I may say, to get out from recession. And Brazil is for sure one of the main and stronger countries.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Fabiola Moura in New York at fdemoura@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 9, 2009 05:41 EDT