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Finance and Economics；BTG Pactual goes public;Back to basics;
華爾街的老人談起早些年的投行，常流露出懷念之情：那些年，它們還沒上市；那些年，它們還是私人合伙公司。巴西投行BTG認為它做到兩全其美，同時從這兩種公司形式中獲益。4月24日，BTG成功上市（IPO），共募得37億雷亞爾（19億美元）。有的投資者，比方說私募基金J.C. Flowers and Co，在IPO中獲益頗豐并功成身退。跟他們相比，BTG的合伙人們可就沒法那么隨心所欲了。
BTG does not want to go public only to see partners chase Ferraris, third homes and early retirement by taking unnecessary risks in order to plump the share price. So it has put severe restrictions on partners selling shares. Partners who want to leave the bank or cash out will be allowed to sell their shares only to other partners, and only at book value. In this way the bank's culture will not be corrupted by going public, the thinking goes, and shareholders can be reassured that partners will stay for the long term.
想象這樣一幕：上市后，一邊是合伙人買豪車、住新房、提前退休；另一邊，公司則要承擔無謂的風險，努力提升股價……這番景象是BTG最不愿意見到的。為防患于未然，BTG對合伙人出售股票做出了嚴格的限制。合伙人要想從公司套現退出，只能以賬面價值將股票賣給別的合伙人。按照這一思路的設想，上市后，公司的企業文化仍能保持純正。股東也可以放一百個心了，因為合伙人迅速套現離場的可能性降低了。
Some partners are said to be grumbling about the scheme. They will not be able to sell shares at the market price even after they have put in decades of work and want to retire. That raises questions about whether partners are genuinely incentivised to do well by shareholders. And even if the bank's pay policies please the purists, BTG's governance structure will not. André Esteves, the bank's high-voltage billionaire founder, will control around 85% of the bank's common shares and has “sole discretion” to control the bank's policies and management, even when a matter has been put to shareholders.
據說，有些合伙人對這份股票限售方案抱怨連連。他們為公司打拼了幾十年，現在想退休了，卻不能按照市場價賣掉自己的股份。股東對此也抱有疑慮：合伙人們是否得到了真正的激勵，能否用心為公司服務。如果說BTG的薪酬政策合了純粹主義者的心意，它的公司治理結構卻沒有如此。精力旺盛的億萬富翁安德烈?埃斯特維斯作為公司的創始人，控制著約85%的普通股份額。他可以“全權決定”公司的一切政策和管理事務。即使在某事被提交給股東來決定的情形下，仍是由他說的算。
Mr Esteves has ambitions for BTG to become the dominant investment bank in all of Latin America. The bank, like Brazil itself, has had a growth spurt in the past few years, forging into new business lines and countries through a spate of acquisitions. A week before the IPO Mr Esteves was fined 350,000 Euro (457,000 Dollar) for insider trading by Consob, the Italian regulator, which said he bought shares in an Italian meat company in 2007 before a joint venture with JBS, a Brazilian firm, was publicly announced. Mr Esteves denies the allegations. Investors shrugged: the IPO was said to be three times oversubscribed. They are too keen to buy into Mr Esteves to be put off by the controversy, or by any disgruntlement on the part of his colleagues.
埃斯特維斯胸懷壯志，他的夢想是讓BTG成為拉丁美洲首屈一指的投行。同它的祖國巴西一樣，BTG在過去數年中獲得了迅速增長，借助一連串收購交易，擴大了經營范圍，開拓了外國市場。在BTG上市的一周前，意大利證券監管機構CONSOB因埃斯特維斯參與內幕交易，對他做出了罰款35萬歐元（45.7萬美元）的決定。CONSOB稱，埃斯特維斯在2007年得知，一家意大利肉制品企業將與巴西的JBS公司建立合資公司，趕在消息公布前購入了該公司的股票。對于CONSOB的指控，埃斯特維斯做出了斷然否認。投資者則根本不把此事放在心上：據說BTG的IPO獲得了3倍的超額認購。他們實在太想從埃斯特維斯那里買到股票了。在投資者的眼里，關于他的爭議或者同事們對他的任何不滿，全部是浮云。
