The Evolution of Brazil's Banking System (original) (raw)
Banking in the Portuguese Colonial Empire (1864-1975)
2011
This paper provides a general view of the evolution of banking in the Portuguese Colonial Empire between the founding of the first Portuguese colonial bank in 1864 and the independence of most Portuguese colonies in 1975. The text summarizes the legal background, presents the banks existing during that period, examines their businesses and discusses their contribution to the economic evolution of the territories under consideration. As the paper's main conclusions, it may be said that: (i) Portuguese colonial banking followed the continental model of government initiative and tight control, not the British model of private initiative without much government control; (ii) the development of Portuguese colonial banking was always mainly a matter of profiting from the opportunities afforded by economic evolution rather than a matter of autonomously fostering the economic development of the territories.
Banks and banking sector reforms in Brazil: an exploratory study
Banks and Bank Systems, 2017
This paper gives an overview of the banking sector in Brazil; it highlights the reforms undertaken since the late 1980s, and through to 2011, it tracks the growth of the banking sector in response to the reforms implemented thus far; and finally, it highlights the challenges facing the Brazilian banking sector. In particular, the study attempts to assess whether the Brazilian banking system has experienced any phenomenal growth since the implementation of the banking sector reforms in the late 1980’s. Since the late 1980’s, the Brazilian government has implemented a number of banking sector reforms – in order to safeguard and improve the banking sector. As a result of these reforms, the country has enjoyed a substantial growth in its banking sector; and its institutional framework has grown stronger. There has also been an improvement in the Central Bank’s oversight of the financial institutions. The Brazilian banking sector is today one of the most developed banking sectors in the ...
Brazil ’ s largest private banks : an economic and sociopolitical profile
2008
This study examines elements of the power of financ ial institutions, emphasizing control over capital flow – characterized as financial hegemony – the co nstitution of economic or financial groups, the structure of representation of the segment's class interests, and its participation in the political p rocess and in State decision-making mechanisms. Considerin g the economic restructuring undergone by Brazil in the 1990s, the work draws a profile of th e ten largest private banks based on selected economic and sociopolitical indicators. Beyond thei r stance as mere financial intermediaries, it indicates the degree to which those banks become ec onomic groups and, especially, larger organizational units, which is shown in connections with the State and in the class's actual organization and actions in the corporate and polit ica realms.
Brazil's largest private banks: an economic and soc iopolitical
2007
This study examines elements of the power of financ ial institutions, emphasizing control over capital flow ‐ characterized as financial hegemony ‐ the co nstitution of economic or financial groups, the structure of representation of the segment's class interests, and its participation in the political p rocess and in State decision-making mechanisms. Considering the economic restructuring undergone by Brazil in the 1990s, the work draws a profile of th e ten largest private banks based on selected economic and sociopolitical indicators. Beyond thei r stance as mere financial intermediaries, it indicates the degree to which those banks become ec onomic groups and, especially, larger organizational units, which is shown in connections with the State and in the class's actual organization and actions in the corporate and polit ical realms.
America Latina En La Historia Economica, 2015
This paper compares the consequences of different financial policies adopted in Mexico and Brazil in the decades before World War I. In the 1890s, the national governments of Mexico and Brazil pursued strikingly different policies toward banking regulation. In Brazil, after the fall of the monarchy, authorities briefly experimented with financial liberalization. In Mexico, in the same era, public officials created a banking system with more constraints and regulations. We compare the costs and benefits to the financial systems and the macroeconomic effects of these different banking regimes, thereby revisiting two classic concerns of financial historians, the costs of financial fragility versus the benefits of financial liberalization. We look at the outcomes for financial sectors and consider the differences in broad measures of overall economic performance under stress.
Some Political Changes in Brazilian Financial Institutionalization Path
Passagens Revista Internacional de História Política e Cultura Jurídica, 2012
This article discusses recent political changes in the trajectory of financial institutionalisation in Brazil. It considers how, since Lula's two mandates, the Brazilian financial system has trialled several changes to its characteristics in comparison to the events of the 1990s. These new trends have also occurred mainly because during Lula's two mandates and today's mandate under Dilma Rousseff, a developmental economic policy has been implemented in which Brazilian state-owned banks play a more active role. This is especially true of the approach to 2008's international financial crisis and that employed since August 2011, which has seen the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) liaising with other public economic agencies, such as the Ministry of Finance, under the political authority of the Brazilian president.
Review of Political Economy, 2020
This paper analyzes the role played by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in different periods of Brazil's development process since its founding in 1952. The bank's history is nonlinear, varying with socioeconomic and political changes over time. Four major periods in its history are: (i) from its creation to the debt crisis in the 1980s, a period known as 'developmentalism'; (ii) the neoliberal movement of the 1990s; (iii) the reintroduction of the BNDES as a relevant tool for development in the 2000s; and (iv) a new neoliberal movement that arose beginning in mid-2016. Each of these periods is characterized by certain development conventions that shape how institutions, such as the BNDES, operate, and at the same time are shaped by them. In contrast to mainstream economics, which focuses on a one-size-fits-all institution for development, this paper evaluates the interactions between development and institutions as historical processes, with an emphasis on the prevailing development conventions. The trajectory and different roles assumed by the BNDES over time exemplify this permanent relationship, rejecting the idea that particular types of institutions are related to development.
Geopolítica(s). Revista de estudios sobre espacio y poder, 2014
This paper traces the role of the National Bank of Economic and Social Development-BNDES-at two distinct moments in Brazil's economic development trajectory. The first corresponds to the implementing of economic policies based on developmental ideals, when the Bank establishes itself as a funding institution and long-term credit offerer, thus becoming the main financer of State-coordinated infrastructure and industrial sectors of the Brazilian economy. The second one, when the Bank, following liberal inspired economic policy strategies which guide governmental actions, redirects its efforts towards establishing itself as the coordinator and financer of the Brazilian asset restructure by means of mergers and acquisitions promoted by privatizations. The ownership change, more than just a change in control from state-owned to private capital, also leads to a productive diversification of industrial groups, thus, empowering the produc-____________ This article is a partial result of the research "Cooperação Sul-Sul: a study about the dynamics of social economics, politics, science, culture and environment in South America based on the Brazil case", developed with the support of the Research Support Foundation of the state of Bahia-FAPESB-and the National Council of Scientific and Technologic Development-CNPQ- .
Brazil’s Financial Centers in the Twenty-first Century: Hierarchy, Specialization, and Concentration
The Professional Geographer, 2019
The purpose of this article is to examine how the geography of Brazil's financial centers changed since 2000 in terms of financial center hierarchy, specialization, and spatial concentration. To address these questions, we use data on employment and mergers and acquisitions in financial and business services, complemented with data on remuneration and bank assets. Our results show that São Paulo has consolidated its dominance as Brazil's primary financial center, with market for corporate control as an important channel of this process. Rio's decline as a financial center, which started more than fifty years ago, has continued into this century. At the same time, Bras ılia has emerged as the third most important financial center of Brazil. We document the recent dynamic of this territorial division of labor, with Rio's specialization in insurance and Bras ılia's dependence on government-owned banks. Finally, we show signs that Brazil's financial center activities might be following an inverse U-shaped pattern whereby increasing geographical concentration is followed by its slow decline.
2015
D espite their global reach, the processes leading to the financialization of social life are many and varied, both in terms of the agents responsible for their formulation and implementation and in relation to the dynamics and effects that they unleash in different national and local contexts. In Brazil, the government has played a key role in enabling and promoting these processes through the development of programs and initiatives in line with the proposals formulated by institutions like the World Bank and other organizations making up the international financial system. According to these agencies, increasing access to the financial system is one means of attaining higher levels of social inclusion, leading to an expansion of banking services and the supply of credit to low-income populations (Sen 2000; Kumar 2004; Banco Central do Brasil 2010). Over the course of the 2000s, as formal employment and the population’s income rose – both enabled to a large extent by a real increas...
Still the Century of Government Savings Banks? The Caixa Econômico Federal
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, (2006), vol. 26, nº 1 (101), pp. 39-57
This article explores general concerns about government banking, social inclusion, and democracy through case study of the Brazilian federal government savings bank (Caixa Econômica Federal). Review of government savings banks in Brazilian history suggests that these institutions have been at the center of domestic political economy, expanding and contracting under a variety of political regimes and economic conditions. Since capitalization to meet central bank and Basel Accord guidelines in 2001, the Caixa has attempted to modernize, continue to serve as agent for government policies, and expand both popular credit and savings and investment banking activities."
Economic Formation of Brazil: from South Atlantic to South America
Routledge Handbook of Global Economic Histor, 2016
A sort of Brazilian exceptionalism could be suggested insofar as the country stands as the single colonial aggregate that was not fragmented after its Independence in 1822, as well as the only Lusophone nation and long standing constitutional monarchy in the Americas (1822-1889). Economic history in Brazil is no longer a central research field, as it used to be in the postwar period up to the 1970s, the years of Prado Jr and Furtado. New disciplinary divisions and academic specialization have certainly contributed to this. Besides, in most Brazilian Universities the discipline overlaps with, and is sometimes unduly absorbed by, the history of economic thought. There are, however, more substantial reasons. Drawing on Leroy-Beaulieu’s late nineteenth century distinction between ‘exploitation colonies’ and ‘settlement colonies’, Brazil’s historians have tended to eschew the costal factories or warehouses, ignoring significant stages of the European merchant capital expansion. In fact, it was the Atlantic Slave Trade and gold mining that turned Portuguese America's coastal factories and plantation enclaves into a single colony in the eighteenth century. Conceiving Brazil as a territorialized entity from the sixteenth century generates a tautological interpretation that overshadows Southern Atlantic history. The bipolarity between South American slave production sectors and African slave reproduction areas sustained the colonial spatial matrix in the South Atlantic until 1850, well beyond Brazil’s independence. Obliviousness to this is a dismaying tendency in a country where, according to the 2010 Census, more than the half of its inhabitants are of African descent.
América Latina en la Historia Económica, 2015
Este trabajo compara las consecuencias de las diversas políticas financieras adoptadas en México y en Brasil en las últimas décadas antes de la primera guerra mundial. En la década de 1890, los gobiernos nacionales de México y Brasil persiguieron sorprendentemente diferentes políticas de regulación bancaria. En Brasil, después de la caída de la monarquía, las autoridades experimentaron brevemente con la liberalización financiera. En México, en la misma época, los funcionarios de la administración pública habían creado un sistema bancario con más restricciones y regulaciones. Comparamos los costos y beneficios de los sistemas financieros y los efectos macroeconómicos de estos regímenes bancarios diferentes; así, se revisan dos problemas clásicos de la historia financiera, los costos de la fragilidad financiera frente a los beneficios de la liberalización financiera. Observamos los resultados de los sectores financieros y consideramos las diferencias en las medidas generales de los re...