Lisbon, Sept. 15, 2026 (Lusa) – Itaú, Brazil's largest private bank, announced Tuesday that it is consolidating its European operations in Luxembourg to expand its customer base and strengthen business ties between Europe and Brazil.
«We are bridging the gap between our main operations in Brazil and our European client base, which will help us strengthen business flows with European counterparties,» Thomas Campion, chief executive of Itaú Europe, told Lusa.
The bank is bringing together the full scope of Itaú's Corporate and Investment Banking and Global Markets activities in Luxembourg, where it currently works with around 350 European companies and more than 50 global investor accounts in the equities and fixed-income markets.
Campion emphasised that Europe is strategic for Itaú due to investment flows into Brazil: «There is a great deal of international capital being invested in Brazil by European clients and institutions. We have seen significant inflows [of capital] over the last few decades, and this will continue.» «It is a very attractive market across various sectors, and we are establishing links between our main operations in Brazil, where the bank is the leading financial conglomerate, and our European client base, which will obviously help us to strengthen business flows with European counterparties,» he said, emphasising that Europe is strategically important for the Brazilian bank.
For Thomas Campion, the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, which came into force on 1 May, could give a new boost to business between the two regions, although he noted that it is still difficult to quantify the impact and determine when it will begin to be felt.
«We see every reason to expect a positive impact on trade and flows between these two regions, namely Europe and Brazil,» he said, acknowledging that it is «difficult at present to assess precisely what the impact will be and when, but it should certainly be positive».
In addition to companies and institutional investors, Itaú, which has operated in Europe for 30 years, also sees growth opportunities in private banking, driven by the increase in the number of high-net-worth Brazilians moving to European countries.
According to the executive, this trend led Itaú to develop investment advisory services for private banking in Europe, aimed in particular at clients who already had a relationship with the bank in Brazil or other South American countries.
«We will continue to see clients moving to Europe, and the bank is positioning itself to say that we can continue to serve these clients outside South America, in Europe as well,» he explained.
Itaú Europe has been operational since 1 June, after obtaining a banking licence and completing the merger with the group's former bank based in Portugal.
Operating from Luxembourg, the bank offers services such as corporate lending, foreign trade finance and financial advisory services; it can also draw on the group's presence in South America to support European companies with businesses and subsidiaries in Latin America.
Following the reorganisation, the group incorporated its former bank based in Portugal into Itaú Europe, headquartered in Luxembourg, whilst the group continues to operate in Portugal through a branch in Lisbon.
The new organisation will bring together Itaú's banking operations in Portugal and the United Kingdom, as well as the wealth management activities the group already carries out in the northern hemisphere.
When asked about the choice of Luxembourg, Thomas Campion pointed to the country's economic and political stability and its importance as a financial centre, whilst also highlighting the need to adapt the bank's structure to new European regulations, such as CRD VI, which tightens the requirements applicable to third-country banks operating in the European Union.
«Luxembourg is a very strong financial centre, if not one of the strongest in the European Economic Area. There is also economic and political stability, which is obviously very important for financial institutions,» he said.
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