Market Roundup: Brazil’s stock exchange could have competition

A new competitor to B3 will come sooner or later

Rumors about new competitors to Brazil’s stock exchange operator B3 are frequent. The latest came this week, about a month after Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mudabala announced that it had completed a new investment in Americas Trading Group (ATG), a leading Brazilian electronic trading infrastructure player. 

As reported by O Globo and Bloomberg, this investment would be the first step in the creation of a new operator capable of competing with B3 by 2025. A former executive of brokerages Ágora and Genial, Claudio Pracownik, would be the new CEO of ATG, although this has not yet been officially confirmed.

State of play. B3, the leading exchange in Latin America and the fourth-largest in the Americas — according to data provided to The Brazilian Report by the World Federation of Exchanges — has been diversifying its business for several years. 

• It has launched its own receivables and trade bills registry and made several acquisitions to become a data and analytics hub.

• Asked recently about its monopoly position, B3 CEO Gilson Finkelsztain said the company already competes with several other companies, both domestically and abroad.
• Looking at the different activities under B3’s umbrella — stock trading, investment and credit contracts, and derivatives, among others — its business is already “shared” with other players.

Background. Brazil once had more than one stock exchange, the Rio de...