BNP Paribas's Parvest Latin America Fund Moves Assets to Brazil
Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- BNP Paribas SA's Jacopo Valentino, who oversees the company's $270 million Parvest Latin America Fund in Sao Paolo, moved about $7 million into Brazilian stocks over the past month on expectations for an increase in consumer spending.
The 42-year-old bought shares such as Sao Paulo-based brewer Cia. de Bebidas das Americas and department store Lojas Renner SA. To fund the purchases, he sold shares in Chile and Mexico and used some of the $100 million that has piled into the fund this year.
The Luxembourg-based fund is attracting clients after beating both its benchmark and indexes in Europe, where most of its customers are based. It has returned about 43 percent this year, more than the 38 percent gain for the Standard & Poor's IFC Investable Latin America Index and the 22 percent return for the Dow Jones Stoxx 50 Index.
``Latin America has been in and out of fashion, but the bulk of risk is gone now and there is a lot of opportunity,'' Italian- born Valentino, who started working on the fund in 2001, said in a telephone interview. He originally went to Latin America when his father went to work for Fiat SpA's operations there.
