General Atlantic hires executive to lead Brazil team

General Atlantic has brought on Fernando Marques Oliveira as managing director to head up the firm's Latin American investment programme and its office in Sao Paolo, Brazil. 

Oliveira is stepping into the newly created position to lead the Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm's investment activities in Brazil as well as the greater Latin American region. He will join the firm's special advisors Mario Bethlem, former chief executive officer of IBM Brazil, and Alexandre Bourgeois, the founder of Brazilian hedge fund Lutece Investimentos, as well as vice president Doug Scherrer.
 
Most recently, Oliveira was a director at Brazilian family investment office Grupo Icatu and has been involved in the Brazilian private equity industry since 1997.
 
The Sao Paulo office was opened in 2000 to support General Atlantic's portfolio companies looking to expand in Latin America. The same year, Bethlem joined the firm as a special advisor.

Over last two years, the firm has become increasingly active in Latin America. “I do think that the market really has matured and we’re finding good investment opportunities,” General Atlantic’s head of marketing Pat Hedley told PEO.

This year, Bourgeois joined the Sao Paolo office as special advisor, and Scherrer moved to the Brazil location from the firm's office in Greenwich.

General Atlantic has invested just short of $700 million in Latin America to date across three investments. The firm last month made a “strategic minority investment” in Brazilian healthcare insurance group Qualicorp.

The firm made its debut Latin America investment in August 2007 in Argentina-based online trading platform MercadoLibre, which has since completed an initial public offering. MercadoLibre was followed by a November 2007 investment in Brazil's equities, futures and commodities exchange BM&F Bovespa.
 
General Atlantic manages evergreen funds of $15 billion, with offices in North America, South America, Hong Kong, Germany, India and the UK. The firm makes roughly 10 growth investments per year of between $50 million and $500 million.