The past 12 months were transformational for BTG Pactual’s family office operation. Two major acquisitions – Julius Baer’s Brazilian family-office business, with approximately $11 billion in assets under management (AUM), and JGP Wealth Management, with over $3.4 billion – were successfully integrated into the bank’s multi-family office structure in 2025, taking total multi-family office AUM to approximately $22 billion.
Together with the US integration of Miami-based Greytown Advisors, with $1 billion in assets, these moves have established BTG as the most distinguished multi-family office across Latin America.
The scale is significant, but the context matters. BTG was the first bank in the region to establish a dedicated multi-family office inside a private banking structure, more than 10 years ago. At a time when the conventional wisdom held that family-office independence and institutional banking were fundamentally incompatible, BTG made a structural argument: that the two could coexist if the governance was designed correctly. That model has since been widely replicated across Latin America.
“The real asset of a family office is being a specialist in the family itself,” says Rogerio Pessoa, partner and head of wealth management. “Having deep knowledge of the family – understanding their entire investment ecosystem, their operational needs, their relationships – and from that, building a service that is genuinely theirs.”
The independence that underpins this is not just stated – it is contractual. Clients can elect to hold custody entirely outside BTG, and a significant proportion do. The wealth-planning team – 12 lawyers operating independently with three based outside Brazil in Europe, the US and Colombia – advises on succession, tax residency and cross-border structures with no conflict of interest with the institution.
The real asset of a family office is being a specialist in the family itself. Having deep knowledge of the family … and from that, building a service that is genuinely theirs
Rogerio Pessoa
The Julius Baer and JGP integrations brought more than assets. Each institution carried a distinct investment culture – Julius Baer with a strong fund-of-funds and hedge fund orientation, JGP built around direct liquid assets and a more conservative equity approach – and the chief investment office spent 2025 working through a deliberate process of aligning strategic allocation frameworks and drawing on the best practices of each. André Jakurski, formerly of JGP, joined as chairman of the family office investment and allocation committee, providing continuity for clients who came across in that transaction and adding intellectual depth to the platform.
The international infrastructure is a genuine differentiator in the Latin American context. BTG has offices in Miami, New York, London, Luxembourg, Lisbon and Madrid, staffed with professionals recruited from leading international banks over recent years. For a Latin American family with children living abroad, assets in multiple jurisdictions and exposure to several tax regimes simultaneously, this matters. Clients receive a single advisory conversation that spans all those geographies, rather than being transferred between a local team and a separate international desk with different incentives and imperfect information about each other’s positions.
Portfolio construction incorporates non-financial assets – real estate, business interests and other illiquid holdings – so that risk management reflects the family’s complete balance sheet rather than the portion under custody alone. Consolidated reporting across providers, jurisdictions and platforms gives the family office a view of total global exposure that a single-custodian model structurally cannot provide.
The acquisitions have also expanded BTG’s cross-border reach in North America, with Greytown bringing an established client base of Central American ultra-high-net-worth families now served through the US platform.
Thirteen years after becoming the first in the region to make the case that a multi-family office could sit credibly inside a bank, BTG Pactual is now, by a considerable margin, the largest proof of that proposition.
