Mendes, a Brazilian native, will move back to Sao Paulo from New York, according to Stefan Simon, head of the Americas region and a member of the management board. Stephan Wilken, a German native who has been country chief for more than two years, is going back to Germany, as “was always the plan,” Simon said.
The German firm is building a local team in Brazil and Mexico for deal origination and merger-and-acquisition advisory work, reporting to the co-heads of the Latin America coverage team, Esra Turk in London and Javier Vargas in New York. In August, Alejandro Ortega joined as head of origination and advisory for Mexico.
Subject to regulatory approval, Mendes will report to Simon and Sameen Farooqui. Mendes started his career at Banco Pactual SA in 1990 as a fixed-income trader in Brazil, and had stints JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley before joining the German bank as head of Brazil macro trading in February 2005. He then became co-head of global markets for Brazil, and moved to New York in 2015 to lead the emerging markets flow-trading business for the region.