André Santos Esteves

Swashbuckling chief executive of Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual got a huge boost in December when he sold 18% of the bank to a consortium of foreign institutional investors for $1.8 billion, valuing the bank at $10 billion. BTG Pactual handled some of the largest transactions in Brazil in the past year, including a $12 billion deal between Royal Dutch Shell and ethanol producer Cosan. Armed with new capital, Esteves vows to expand the bank beyond Brazil across Latin America and take it public in 2012. Working up from the IT department, Esteves made his mark in the 1990s as an ace trader at Brazilian investment bank Pactual, which was later bought by Swiss bank UBS. In 2009 he engineered the repurchase of Pactual from UBS.