Brazilian Shell Company Launches $300m IPO

Invest Tur, a private equity fund focused on Brazil’s tourism real estate market, has launched an IPO scheduled to price in mid-July that will raise between $300m-$400m via Bovespa. The company, headed by Carlos Novis Guimarães, former private-sector coordinator at the IDB, has no assets, and is looking to lure institutional buyers with the management’s credibility and their ability to execute profitable trades in Brazil’s tourism real estate sector. “We already have a $1.2bn pipeline that has been developed over the past three or four years,” Guimarães tells LatinFinance, adding despite the lack of assets, Invest Tur will be listed on the Novo Mercado, Bovespa’s highest corporate governance category. Institutional buyers in the US, Europe, Brazil and Asia will be offered bundles of 30 shares, at $1,000 per share. Credit Suisse, the sole lead, together with the company’s four founding partners, conceived the relatively novel structure for the Brazilian market, says Guimarães, who says the proposal fully aligns managers’ and investors’ interests. This is the second shell acquisition company to go public in Brazil, though it is the first time 100% of the capital is being raised with investors. BrasilAgro raised $276m in a late April IPO, also via Credit Suisse, promising to score agriculture sector deals, though a significant portion of the equity came from the company’s managers.