By Luciana Magalhaes and Marcela Ayres
SAO PAULO/BRASILIA, Sept 11 (Reuters) – Brazilian investor and former banker Marcelo Kayath would be “an excellent choice” to serve as finance minister should Senator Flavio Bolsonaro win the presidency in next month’s election against leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the candidate’s brother Eduardo Bolsonaro told Reuters on Friday.
Kayath, founder of investment advisory firm QMS Capital, spent two decades at Credit Suisse and served as the bank’s managing director for Latin America.
Speaking as an adviser to the campaign, former Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro said he had met Kayath four times, including on Thursday, and noted a “convergence of views on several issues.”
He stressed, however, that no decision had been made and that other candidates remain under consideration, declining to name them.
Flavio Bolsonaro and Lula have been locked in a virtually tied race ahead of October’s election.
“Kayath is recognized as one of the key architects of the IPO boom of the 2000s. He is an expert at selling Brazil’s story abroad and attracting foreign investment, which is exactly what the country needs right now,” Eduardo Bolsonaro said.
He described Kayath as a “bold thinker” with strong relationships among major U.S. financial market players, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
Kayath told Reuters his priority was to help craft solutions to Brazil’s challenges, particularly through a new sustainable-growth agenda.
“At this stage, my view is that we need adjustments to get the country back on track, while preserving social programs and protecting those who depend on them most,” he said.
Asked whether that implied changes to mandatory spending, Kayath said any expenditure cuts should be “surgical, not indiscriminate.”
“Those adjustments should not be aimed at pleasing financial markets. They should be aimed at improving people’s lives and making social policies more efficient and sustainable,” he said.
A member of Bolsonaro’s campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that the candidate’s focus remains on the election and that no frontrunner has emerged for the top economic post.
(Reporting by Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo and Marcela Ayres in Brasilia, editing by Manuela Andreoni and Aurora Ellis)
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