In Brazil, Joseph and Moise grew the bank into one of Latin America’s biggest, catering to the country’s wealthiest people and most prominent companies. The business was known for its soundness, withstanding the many turbulences its home nation threw at it.
Jacob Safra famously said: “If you choose to sail upon the seas of banking, build your bank as you would your boat, with the strength to sail safely through any storm.”
It also had misteps, including in 2009 after the group was linked to a feeder fund for Bernie Madoff, who orchestrated a $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme.
Joseph and Moise split in the 2000s, when a falling out between the two led Joseph to create a rival lender across the street from his family’s, J Safra, and started poaching clients. To end the dispute, Moise sold his share of the family business to Joseph in 2006 for a reported $2.5 billion and left the bank.
Joseph Safra, who had parkinson’s disease, did make arrangements for his succession. His children Jacob, David, Alberto and Esther were all granted shares of the family’s main asset, Banco Safra, last December, according to a regulatory filing. Two of his sons already have central roles within the group, with Jacob running the international side of the operations, while David oversees the Brazilian firm.
Joseph’s middle son, Alberto, departed from the board of his family lender in 2019, due “exclusively to his personal intent of dedicating himself to another project with the family,” according to a memo sent by Safra at the time. Alberto kept his stake at Grupo J. Safra and created ASA Investments. Joseph’s daughter, Esther, is an educator and was never involved with the bank.
“Joseph, Moise and Edmond had their differences at their time, disagreeing on how to handle the business, and the next generation might have their disagreements too,” said Rodrigo Marcatti, a former Safra employee who’s now chief executive of Veedha Investimentos.
The younger Safras are already making their mark. The Brazilian unit, built to serve the wealthy and the nation’s biggest firms, ventured into retail banking this year. In October it launched AgZero, a digital bank with no branches, while beefing up a digital investment platform under the SafraInvest brand. Notoriously low-profile, the lender has invested more on marketing.
There are also subtler changes. Last year, David was seated arm-in-arm with the rest of the nation’s banking elite at a year-end luncheon hosted by the Brazilian federation of banks. At those sorts of events, Banco Safra was usually represented by a high-ranking executive, not a family member -- Joseph was incredibly media shy, rarely gave interviews and avoided public events. David’s presence was seen as a show of force within the firm.
“Safra was always a traditional bank, but being traditional doesn’t mean it’s not evolving,” Schiozer said. “What differentiates it is that Safra is seen as safe, no one is afraid of doing businesses with it.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.