Itau Targets LatAm Rich with UBS Hires

Brazil’s Itau, which recently poached senior private banker Flavio Souza from UBS’s Zurich office, is boosting its bid for a bigger slice of Latin America’s growing private banking and wealth management market. In new offices in Miami and Zurich, Itau will install a team of six bankers, four of whom were poached directly from UBS. Souza and Marcelo Coscarelli, both of whom worked at UBS’s Zurich office, will relocate to Miami with the former heading the LatAm private bank and Coscarelli to head Banco Itau Europa’s Americas operations. Teodor Horat, from Hyposwiss Private Bank, will be a member of Itau Scwheiz’s board, while Daniel Esslinger from UBS will be head of sales and markets for the burgeoning branch. Stefan Jenni, also from UBS will work out of Itau’s Zurich office, as will Paul Hunt, who comes from Rothschild Bank Switzerland. More hires are forthcoming, says the Brazilian institution.