In late 2005, André Esteves turned down an offer from Goldman Sachs to buy his investment bank. Instead he decided to sell Pactual to UBS and then buy it back three years later.

This week Financial News was the first to report that André Esteves, chief executive of the Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, was under investigation for trading on his personal account in 2007. With just over a week to go until the bank's IPO, which is expected to value the company at around $15bn, the Italian regulator Consob has fined Esteves €350,000 for alleged insider trading and frozen €4.2m of his assets. BTG Pactual says Esteves will appeal against the ruling, and that it will have no impact on the bank or on Esteves' position.