Antonio Pereira and the value of a trained mind

Antonio Pereira chose an unusually practical description for what engineering had given him: treinamento da mente. Training the mind. Addressing finance students in 2026, the head of Lazard’s Brazil investment banking business looked back at a degree whose usefulness had travelled well beyond its original subject. There is something appealingly unceremonious about that description. A university education becomes a habit of thinking, available long after the examination papers have disappeared.

His own route began with mechanical engineering and an economics minor at Tufts University, then continued through New York and São Paulo. By the time he was talking to students about their futures, he had spent three decades in investment banking. The tools of the profession were changing. His early preparation still had a place in the conversation.

A new market, viewed from London

In December 2000, a Brazilian television-industry association was preparing a meeting with financial analysts in London. Chase and Goldman Sachs were organising the gathering. Pereira, then at Goldman, described its purpose as promoting the market’s image. The setting is a useful early glimpse of his working life: a Brazilian industry explaining its possibilities to an international financial audience.

The concern around that meeting was the gap between domestic opportunity and overseas investor apprehension. Bringing people together would at least give the opportunity a hearing. Such work can sound modest beside the announcement of a completed transaction. Yet before a deal can happen, people have to understand what they are being invited to consider. An invitation and a persuasive explanation are part of the machinery.

A few months later, in March 2001, Pereira was discussing finance for Brazilian broadband businesses. Capital remained available, he said, despite difficulties in the United States. He identified possibilities including local private equity and domestic fixed-income investors. His emphasis fell on the choice of partner: an investor should contribute knowledge alongside money.

That last distinction gives the episode its staying power. A financing discussion can become a hunt for a number. Pereira was asking what else would arrive with it. Expertise, and the ability to use it, belonged in the assessment. Even in a business built around capital, the cheque did not complete the description of the relationship.

The work behind the next title

Pereira had joined Goldman Sachs in New York in 1996 and transferred to Brazil in 1999. The move put an international beginning alongside a sustained career in the Brazilian market. Geography matters here because his later responsibilities would require both local familiarity and the ability to work across a larger organisation.

In April 2012, Goldman appointed Pereira and Fábio Bicudo co-chief operating officers of its Brazilian investment banking business. Daniel Wainstein became chairman of the investment banking operation. The division of responsibilities had a stated purpose: Pereira and Bicudo would help handle daily management, giving Wainstein more room to concentrate on clients and transactions.

The change came as Goldman described an expanded Brazilian operation. Its Latin America leadership said the local workforce had doubled over the preceding three years, and that revenues had grown. More people and more business created a need to divide the leadership work differently. Pereira’s operating appointment belonged to that particular organisational moment, with client relationships and daily management receiving separate attention. It is a reminder that a senior career can advance through the practical demands of a growing office, as well as through the more visible business of advising on a deal.

This is the less photogenic part of a banking career. An organisation needs someone to make the working day function. The task is easy to underestimate precisely because a well-run day attracts little attention. Here, however, it was central enough to the business that Goldman changed its leadership arrangements around it.

In March 2013, Pereira and Bicudo became co-heads of investment banking in Brazil, following Wainstein’s departure. Goldman’s Latin America leadership pointed to their familiarity with Brazilian executives and with colleagues around the world. The explanation was specific: knowing both groups helped collaboration. The promotion placed a value on relationships that crossed the boundary between an office and the wider firm.

There was continuity in that change. Both incoming leaders already shared operating responsibilities. They were taking on a different assignment in a business they knew from the inside. The sequence makes Pereira’s progression more interesting than a list of increasingly senior titles: management work came before the shared leadership role, and each brought a different kind of responsibility.

A handover with a history attached

By 2016, Pereira was head of Goldman’s investment banking business in Brazil. In June 2019, he moved to Lazard as managing director and CEO of Brazil Investment Banking. At the same time, Jean Pierre Zarouk became chairman of that business. One executive arrived as another changed responsibilities, with the existing operation providing the starting point.

Zarouk’s connection went back to the Signatura Lazard joint venture in 2004. It became a full Lazard office in 2012. Pereira therefore joined an established advisory business with its own relationships and history. A change at the top came with the practical question every successor inherits: how to take responsibility for something other people have already built.

Peter Orszag, then chief executive of Lazard Financial Advisory, welcomed Pereira as part of strengthening the Brazilian franchise. The appointment paired his experience with a team already operating in the market. It also marked a substantial change of employer after the Goldman career that had begun more than two decades earlier.

Today, the São Paulo business covers mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, restructuring and general corporate finance advice. Its clients include businesses, government decision-makers and institutional investors with Brazilian interests. That range matters to the role: an advisory practice must respond to different financial questions, rather than rely on one kind of transaction arriving on schedule.

“excellence, discretion and independent advice”

Antonio Pereira, describing Lazard Brazil’s priorities

Pereira’s published account of the office’s priorities puts experienced people and long-term client results alongside those three qualities. It is a restrained vocabulary for consequential work. Discretion, in particular, suggests an occupation in which a person’s usefulness may have little relationship to how much attention he attracts.

The students inherit different tools

On May 19, 2026, Pereira joined a career conversation organised by FEA Finance Jr, FGV INALT and InFinance. The venue was the Carlos and Diva Pinho auditorium at FEA-USP in São Paulo. Three student finance organisations had brought an experienced practitioner into a setting where the next working life was still being considered.

His message about artificial intelligence was pointed: routine preparation was becoming easier to automate, while judgment would be needed earlier. Spreadsheet execution alone would provide a weaker foundation for a career. His description of engineering as mental training belongs beside that warning. The transferable skill becomes the ability to examine a problem when the familiar method changes.

There is a useful challenge in that pairing. Students preparing for a profession naturally want to know its techniques. A senior practitioner was asking them to think about the decisions behind the techniques too. The attraction of mastering a tool is that mastery can be demonstrated. Judgment asks for something harder to display neatly: a reason to trust the conclusion.

Another board, another timescale

Pereira also chairs the St. Paul’s Foundation board. He is a parent of pupils at the school, giving the connection an ordinary family dimension alongside the formal governance role. Around that board are people from education, business and law. The work brings his professional life into contact with a different institutional purpose.

The foundation’s scholarship programme provides access to St. Paul’s School. Preparation matters here in a literal way: the selection process includes interviews, assessments and an extended preparatory period with English learning. Admission is approached as a process requiring time and support. Potential has to be given an opportunity to develop before a final decision is made.

An October 2026 overview of the foundation’s 2024-2025 report recorded 15 new students joining in August 2025, bringing the programme to 50 Senior School scholars. The result belongs to the students, staff, donors, volunteers and families involved. It gives the board’s work a concrete setting without turning an institutional achievement into one person’s trophy.

The foundation’s Class of 2025 adds another detail to that picture. Four graduates went on to the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Manchester. Three received full scholarships. Those are the students’ next chapters, with destinations that make the programme’s purpose tangible. A place at school leads, in time, to choices beyond it.

Across these episodes, preparation takes several forms: explaining an industry to investors, organising the daily work of a banking business, learning to exercise judgment, supporting a student before entry to a school. These are different responsibilities, with different measures of success. A financing partner may contribute knowledge. A colleague may make a complicated organisation easier to navigate. A preparatory course may give a candidate time to become ready. None of those contributions is captured completely by an appointment announcement or a transaction total. They are nevertheless part of the work that allows a next step to happen. Pereira’s phrase about engineering gives that work a pleasingly practical expression: a mind trained for the next question.