BTG Pactual IPO will value investment bank at $15bn BTG Pactual is set to float later this month in a deal that will value the rapidly growing Brazilian investment bank's equity at up to $15bn and the shareholdings of a swathe of executives at more than $150m each. The listing of the largest independent Latin American investment bank this month will value the stake of controlling shareholder André Esteves with up to $5bn. It will also show that 35 other senior partners own stakes of just over 1 per cent. In the prospectus for the deal, BTG revealed a structure for paying senior executives that it described as a "meritocratic partnership" and which is aimed at avoiding some pitfalls of other investment banks that made a transition to public markets. Partners in the firm will not be allowed to sell any shares on the public market, only able to trade shares amongst themselves at book value. In a complex scheme, the firm will also only allow partners to buy more shares if they have been deemed to add "value" during a year. Partners who have not added "value" will be forced to sell shares. The Brazilian investment bank, controlled by 43-year-old Mr Esteves with a 30 per cent stake, aims to sell a 10th of its shares, which will start trading on April 26. Mr Esteves and other partners plan to buy $150m of shares in the IPO. The listing will be the first significant initial public offering in Brazil in more than nine months and is seen as important in kickstarting the moribund equity capital market in the emerging country. In its planned IPO on the Brazilian exchange Bovespa - which will be managed by itself, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Banco Bradesco - four fifths of the offering will be new shares and the remainder from existing equity. It wants to use the proceeds to bring its core tier one capital ratio above 20 per cent, an above-industry standard level for this measure of balance sheet strength. It also wants to use shares as an acquisition tool as it looks to expand its operations across Latin America. The bank is interested in smaller boutiques in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. The rest of the shares will be sold by some of the institutional shareholders that had been brought in at the end of 2010 in a $1.8bn deal. While sovereign wealth funds GIC of Singapore, CIC from China and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council will hold on to their stake, several family investors, such as Jacob Rothschild and Italy's Agnelli family as well as private equity investor JC Flowers, will sell some of their shares. BTG Pactual has rapidly ascended in the past few years from a small investment house into one of the world's largest emerging markets investment banks. In the past year, its net income rose by 70 per cent to just below $1.1bn and its return on equity reached 24.2 per cent, a level reminiscent of those seen at western investment banks in the credit-bubble years before the financial crisis.