The Swiss bank has bought a majority stake in a multi-family office as part of its move to deepen business in Brazil.

UBS has bought a majority stake in Brazil-based multi-family office CONSENSO, an organization overseeing more than BRL20 billion (around $6.1 billion).

The transaction is expected to close towards the beginning of the third quarter of 2017, subject to customary closing conditions. The combined business will be run jointly by UBS executives and CONSENSO's founding partners, Zurich-listed UBS said in a statement earlier this week.

Specific financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. 

"UBS has built up its capabilities in Brazil, allowing it to offer clients in the country strong local expertise, alongside leading global advice," Sylvia Coutinho, UBS country head in Brazil, said. 

“By combining our local expertise and reputation with UBS's standing and strengths, and maintaining the successful open platform strategy currently run by both firms in Brazil, we believe we can significantly enhance our value proposition and widen our appeal to a larger number of private clients in the country," Luiz Borges, founding partner of the MFO, said.

The move to deepen its Brazil business puts UBS in a contrary path to banking group HSBC, for example, which in June 2015 announced it was selling operations in Latin America’s largest economy, along with its Turkey business, as part of a restructuring to its booking centres.

Despite recent economic woes, Brazil – one of the so-called BRIC emerging market nations – is seen as having considerable potential due to an expanding middle class. In June 2013, Edinardo Figueiredo, head of wealth management at UBS Brazil, was quoted saying that he was looking at the family office segment as an opportunity for growth, seeing targets in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba (source: Euromoney). 

UBS’s Brazil business offers wealth management services to private investors and broker dealer and corporate client solutions to institutional clients and has had a presence in the country since 1960, now employing about 250 staff.

CONSENSO, meanwhile, was founded in 2003, it is based in São Paulo and has branch offices in Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Belo Horizonte.