Itaú BBA is the whosale banking arm of the Itaú Unibanco Banco Múltiplo Group. With a track record of successful associations and a investment based on offering the best products and services to companies, Itaú BBA is a result of merging BBA with the corporate areas of the commercial banks, Itaú and Unibanco. The history of Itaú BBA begins with BBA Creditanstalt, founded in 1988 in São Paulo by Fernão Bracher and Antonio Beltran, in partnership with Austria’s largest bank. The bank’s operations focused on financial banking operations with wholesale characteristics, principally underwriting, hedge operations, credit and foreign exchange. In 1991, it was the only Brazilian lead manager in the foreign bank consortium for investments in the program for privatizing state-owned companies. In the same year, the bank received Central Bank authorization to operate a subsidiary in the Bahamas, thus meeting customer demand in the international area. In 1994, the institution signed a cooperation agreement with the asset manager, Paribas Capital. In the following year, it entered a joint venture with the Capital Group of Los Angeles, constituting the asset manager BBA Capital. BBA also acquired Financiadora Mappin, a consumer finance company, and established Fináustria, specializing in auto finance. By this time the bank already had branches in Campinas, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. In 2001, BBA has a new business partner following the acquisition of Creditanstalt by the German Group, HVB. A year latter, the association with the Icatu Group saw the emergence of two new companies: BBA Icatu Corretora and BBA Icatu Investimentos. At the end of 2002, the association with Itaú was announced with the creation of a new institution, Itaú BBA, and the autonomy to conduct the group’s entire corporate customer and investment banking businesses. So it was that the new bank came into existence combining the solid capital base and liquidity of Itaú and the specialization and outstanding record of BBA in the wholesale banking segment. In 2005, Itaú BBA expanded its investment banking businesses, rapidly consolidating as one of the market leaders in mergers and acquisitions, equities and domestic fixed income transactions. In early 2008, the institution expanded its activities in international fixed income operations and structured products. In 2009, the Central Bank of Brazil approved the merger of Itaú with Unibanco. Itaú BBA, in turn, merged with the Corporate area of Unibanco, also taking over responsibility for the group’s institutional treasury business - its challenge to become the best wholesale, investment and treasury bank in Latin America.