BTG Pactual gives investors five days to pull out of listing BTG Pactual has given retail investors five days to pull out of its high-profile listing next week after it emerged that the chief executive of the Brazilian investment bank had been fined by Italian regulators for insider trading. The initial public offering, which is expected to value the bank at up to $15bn and provide a much-needed boost to Brazil's equity market, has been lauded as the latest conquest in the rise of Latin America's largest independent investment bank. However, the deal received a blow on Monday when it emerged that André Esteves, BTG Pactual's chief executive, who owns 24 per cent of the bank, had been fined €350,000 by Consob, the Italian financial watchdog, for insider trading. Consob said that 43-year-old Mr Esteves had bought €3.4m worth of shares in Cremonini, an Italian beef producer, in November 2007 knowing that its Brazilian rival JBS was about to sign a joint venture with the company. In light of Consob's ruling, BTG Pactual released a statement in Brazil's Valor Econômico newspaper on Tuesday telling retail investors that they have until April 23 to cancel their orders for the IPO. "Potential investors who put in orders before April 16, will be able to desist from their offers within five working days," the bank said, in line with Brazilian regulation that demands cooling-off periods for retail investors in such circumstances. BTG Pactual also amended its prospectus for the offering, adding comments made on Monday about Consob's investigation saying that Mr Esteves had been informed on April 13 of the fine, and it believed the probe was without merit and had decided to appeal. Consob's investigation centres on trades made by Mr Esteves in his personal account when he was employed by UBS where he worked after selling BTG Pactual to the Swiss bank for $2.5bn when he was just 37 years old. Mr Esteves bought BTG Pactual back from UBS in 2009 after the beginning of the financial crisis. A person familiar with the matter said the Italian case related to a portfolio of stocks that Mr Esteves had bought comprising of a range of companies that he believed could one day be possible takeover targets of Brazilian groups. They were chosen based on analysis rather than inside knowledge as part of this equity strategy, the person said. Because they were not able to prove deliberate insider activity, Italian authorities fined him under the lighter civil rather than criminal code and gave him a relatively light penalty. Analysts were in doubt on Tuesday about whether retail investors, which are expected to make up 10 per cent of BTG Pactual's planned flotation on April 26, would be put off by the scandal. "They basically want to make sure that any investor who goes in for the offering does so without any doubts," said Luis Miguel Santacreu, an analyst at Austin Asis, a banking-sector consultancy in São Paulo. "It's not exactly a pleasing turn of events but at least it happened before the IPO to give investors the opportunity to reflect on whether they still want to go in for it," Mr Santacreu said. The offering is also expected to value the stake of Mr Esteves, Brazil's 13th-richest individual, at up to $5bn and those of 35 other senior partners at more than $150m each. With additional reporting by Joe Leahy