Bloomberg 3 September 2012
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the Wall Street bank that doubled its Brazil headcount in the past two years, is planning a comeback in the nation’s private-equity market and expects returns as high as 35 percent.
“We are looking at some sectors that we think we understand and that need investments,” Alejandro Vollbrechthausen, president of the New York-based company’s Brazil unit, said in an interview in Sao Paulo. Infrastructure, commodities and telecommunications are among the target industries, the 44-year-old banker said.
Goldman Sachs’s last major foray in the Brazil private- equity market ended in 2007, when the bank invested 400 million reais ($196 million) of its own capital in Santelisa Vale SA, a sugar-cane processor that later had to restructure its debt. Santelisa was bought in 2009 by Louis Dreyfus Commodities. Goldman Sachs also in 2007 invested in BRA Transportes Aereos Ltda., an airline that went bankrupt.