Brazil Has Its Own Iron Lady, and She Won’t Be Giving You a Loan
- Investors cheer Bastos Marques’s appointment as new BNDES CEO
- Bank’s bonds are outperforming debt from emerging-market peers
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The new leader of Brazil’s development bank is bolstering confidence in the government’s efforts to revive the economy by pledging to shrink the lender’s size.
BNDES, as the bank is known, is curtailing subsidized credit for Brazil’s biggest companies to focus on financing private-public partnerships and smaller businesses that would otherwise have trouble getting loans. The effort is led by 59-year-old Maria Silvia Bastos Marques, who was appointed chief executive officer in May. She earned the moniker “Iron Lady” from local media for her straightforward manner when she ran steelmaker Cia. Siderurgica Nacional from 1999 to 2002.