(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. named Maria Silvia Bastos Marques chief executive officer for Brazil, the first woman to lead one of the firm's local operations in Latin America and one of just a handful of female bank executives in the region.
Bastos, 61, will succeed Paulo Leme, who's retiring in April, Goldman Sachs said Tuesday in an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg.
Of the 20 largest financial institutions in Brazil by assets, only BNP Paribas Brazil's CEO, Sandrine Ferdane, is a woman. Among smaller operations, UBS Group AG's Sylvia Coutinho is CEO for Brazil and head of wealth management for Latin America. Beyond the C-suite, just 10 percent of executive committee members in Brazil's financial-services industry are women, compared with the 16 percent global average, according to 2016 data compiled by consultancy Oliver Wyman.
Read more about women's disadvantages in Brazil's job market
Bastos will report to Gonzalo Garcia and Ram Sundaram, co-heads of Latin America, according to the memo.
She was formerly CEO of Brazil's giant state-owned development bank, known as BNDES, and was president of Brazilian steelmaker Companhia Siderurgica Nacional SA and insurance company Icatu Seguros SA. She has also served on the advisory boards of oil company Petrobras and Vale SA.
Goldman Sachs's revenue from Latin America surged 50 percent in 2016 as the firm worked on one of the region's biggest infrastructure-financing deals and sold more hedging strategies to clients. Last year, it hired former Morgan Stanley's former co-head of Latin America investment banking, Marcelo Naigeborin, for its special-situations group and Fabio Federici, a former associate at Grupo BTG Pactual, as a vice-president for equity capital markets.
To contact the reporter on this story: Felipe Marques in Sao Paulo at fmarques10@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steve Dickson, Steven Crabill
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