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Por LUCIANA MAGALHÃES e ROGÉRIO JELMAYER, de São Paulo

Depois de se fortalecerem no mercado interno, os bancos de investimento brasileiros agora buscam novas fronteiras, especialmente nos países vizinhos da América Latina.

O negócio anunciado esta semana entre o Banco BTG Pactual SA e a corretora chilena Celfin Capital é o mais recente exemplo do esforço de bancos brasileiros para capitalizar a expansão econômica sul-americana, enquanto continuam desfrutando de condições favoráveis em seu mercado doméstico.

Pelo acordo anunciado quarta-feira, o BTG está pagando US$ 245 milhões, mais ações equivalentes a 2,4% do capital total do BTG para os 15 proprietários do Celfin. Todos os executivos do Celfin vão permanecer em seus cargos.

Segundo Pedro Galdi, analista do setor bancário da corretora SLW, de São Paulo, “Muitos bancos regionais foram atingidos pela crise financeira global, mas os bancos brasileiros saíram dela bem capitalizados. Eles estão agora numa boa posição para financiar o crescimento regional”.

Outro fator é o crescimento regional. “Muitos países latino-americanos já desfrutam de crescimento robusto”, disse Galdi. “As empresas desses países estão prontas para acessar os mercados de capital.”

“O fluxo de investimentos entre os vários países da região está aumentando muito”, disse André Esteves, diretor-presidente do BTG Pactual, em um comunicado. “Os mercados de capital estão se desenvolvendo a um ritmo acelerado na Colômbia e no Peru. E até mesmo os mercados mais maduros, como Brasil e Chile, continuam com elevadas taxas de crescimento. Estamos muito otimistas quanto às perspectivas para a América Latina.”

O acordo da BTG Pactual vai expandir suas atividades no Chile, Peru e Colômbia, e o banco estuda outras oportunidades na região. Numa entrevista coletiva posterior, Esteves deu a entender que a Argentina poderia ser a próxima região a conquistar, embora o BTG não tenha pressa de firmar uma presença no país. O México, disse ele, “não está fora do radar”, mas é menos atraente devido à sua proximidade com os Estados Unidos e menor expectativa de crescimento.

Com o acordo, o BTG Pactual terá US$ 69 bilhões em ativos que administra para instituições e US$ 28 bilhões em ativos para gestão de fortunas de pessoas físicas.

O banco brasileiro seguiu o exemplo de outros concorrentes domésticos.

No ano passado o Itaú BBA, o braço de investimentos do grande banco Itaú Unibanco Holdings SA, abriu uma sucursal na Colômbia. Em entrevista coletiva de fim de ano, o diretor geral do Itaú BBA, Cândido Bracher, enfatizou a intenção do banco de expandir-se mais rapidamente na América Latina, inclusive através de aquisições.

Bracher disse, “Além da Colômbia, vemos o Peru e o México como mercados interessantes. Na Argentina e no Chile já temos uma forte presença como banco atacadista”.

By SARA MURRAY

Despite signs of life in the job market, the outlook for newly minted college graduates remains grim and many are trying new strategies for landing positions.

Students are starting their job hunts months earlier than usual, while others are looking into short stints at positions outside their major.

Bob Tutag began beating the bushes in October, a time when most college seniors are barely back from summer vacation. But it paid off: The 21-year-old Michigan State University student in March accepted an offer at Developers Diversified Realty Corp., a commercial real-estate firm in Beachwood, Ohio. He starts in May.

Mr. Tutag knew he faced a challenge, having majored in accounting with a specialization in real estate, a sector of the economy hammered by the downturn.

Career-fair recruiting at MSU is down 25% this year. The same story is heard on college campuses from coast to coast: Companies have cut back hiring and when they do have jobs, they have plenty of experienced applicants to pick from. College graduates typically need further training and seasoning, so many employers are skipping college career fairs this year or tapping former interns if they need fresh talent.

Meantime, the job opportunities that are available aren’t spread evenly—either by sector or region—and can be hard to spot. And unlike previous years, employers are making offers, and students are accepting them, early in the fall to lock in specific candidates.

Usually, graduating students have held off until the spring to accept positions.

“Some employers might be encouraged enough to begin to add some employment,” said Philip Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at MSU. But he said, “I’m really not anticipating a significant turnaround until this time next year.”

But there are some bright spots: The unemployment rate for people ages 20 to 24 with a bachelor’s degree was 7.2% in March, down from 7.6% a year earlier and below the 21.9% jobless rate for those in the same age group with high-school degrees only.

Preliminary data from a spring poll of employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers show college-graduate hiring could rise 3% to 5% this year after falling 22% last year.

Erika Skalski, 22, another MSU student poised to graduate in May, is still searching for a job in event planning after studying hospitality, another area hit by the recession, and Spanish. She was encouraged by the interviews she has had, but so far has no offers.

“I’m actually very nervous about it,” Ms. Skalski said, adding that if nothing pans out she will apply to programs that would allow her to move to Spain and teach English for a year or so.

Such plan-Bs are common this year. “We are seeing more students coming into the office talking about what we call the ‘gap-year opportunities,’ ” said Rebecca Sparrow, director of Cornell University’s career services, where recruiting is down slightly this year. She often directs them to programs such as AmeriCorps, Teach for America and similar alternatives.

At the University of Florida in Gainesville recruiting has fallen 40% to 50% from the 2007-08 school year. Education is one of the hard-hit career paths this year, said Wayne Wallace, director of the university’s career-resource center.

“Several years ago the state of Florida could not find enough teachers,” Mr. Wallace said, “now we have school districts that are doing massive layoffs.”

Meanwhile, business and technical majors are likely to see the most demand, particularly as Wall Street resumes hiring.

A recent survey from 7city Learning, a financial-services training company, found that 76% of Wall Street firms plan to hire more recent graduates than a year ago.

Certain regions of the nation are expected to do better than others. At the University of Texas at Austin, the communications school attracted 77 employers at its spring career fair, up from 51 last year. Meanwhile, Facebook Inc., which is opening an office in Austin, has been collecting student resumes to help fill 60 jobs.The country’s south central and northwest regions are expected to increase hiring more than other areas.But with such a competitive market, the biggest worry for hiring experts is that students will give up on their job search without ever starting. In some cases that means heading straight to graduate school, an investment that is only likely to pay off if students know what they want to study and why that will better position them to land a job in the future. Graduate-school enrollment rose 6% last year and will likely continue to rise this year.

By NATASHA GARNETT

Photograph by Johnnie Shand Kydd

FIGURE, DRAWING | Emin at work in her East London studio.

There was a time when it was almost impossible to read an article about Tracey Emin without some small derogatory qualifier attached to the contemporary artist’s name. Invariably, throughout the end of the ’90s and for the best part of the next decade, she would be described as the “loud,” “brash,” “bad girl” of the British art scene. Within the art world, she would often be dismissed for being both self-promoting and self-obsessed, partly due to the autobiographical nature of her work.

Emin brought a lot of the bias on herself. When she first rose to notoriety, as part of a group of artists including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, and Jake and Dinos Chapman, who would come to be known as the YBAs (Young British Artists), Emin certainly lived up to her reputation. She was the artist who embroidered the names of everyone she had ever slept with on the inside of a tent. Her monoprints and drawings told of broken relationships and rape in her teenage years, and catalogued her abortions; she offered up her unmade bed and told viewers to consider it a work of art. Then, in 1997, live on national television, she appeared to be drunk and incoherent, eventually storming off the show muttering, “I want to be with my mum.” From that moment on, in the United Kingdom at least, and even to those who had never paid much attention to contemporary art, Emin became a celebrity. Known, perhaps, for all the wrong reasons.

Now, at 48, Emin finally seems to have sidelined her own personal distractions. Lately, not only has she established herself as a leading figure in the art world, but she’s also become part of the establishment. The same steely fortitude that helped propel her from a humble childhood in the seaside town of Margate to the Maidstone College of Art, and later to London’s prestigious Royal College of Art, has emboldened her work with a disarming honesty and made her one of the most prominent artists of her generation. In 2007 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. Two years later, one of Emin’s idols, Louise Bourgeois, asked her to collaborate on a series of drawings titled “Do Not Abandon Me,” exploring themes of sexuality and female identity. Recently, Emin was appointed professor of drawing at the Royal Academy of Art. She was even invited to greet the queen when Her Majesty visited the Turner Contemporary gallery late last year, which Emin admits was a proud moment. And, at the request of David Cameron, her neon “More Passion” now hangs in 10 Downing Street. In addition to a number of international exhibitions this year, and on the heels of a retrospective of her work to date at London’s prestigious Hayward Gallery, come early 2013, Emin will have her first solo show in the U.S. at Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Could it be that the enfant terrible of the British art scene has finally grown up?

“I’m not sure about that,” says Emin, as she takes a seat at the kitchen table in her East London home. It’s a cold winter afternoon, and instead of making the tea she had suggested, she decides to open a bottle of red wine. “I’m certainly older, and that all seems a long time ago. Things change, you change, your thoughts do, your life moves on and my work has changed because of that too. I’m asking questions that I wasn’t addressing before and doing things that I wasn’t doing before. I know people have a view of me that can be quite one-dimensional, even within the art world. But they don’t know me, so that’s OK, and they are entitled to their opinion.”

In terms of Emin’s art, her various mediums—ink and pencil drawings, monoprints, neons and embroidery foremost among them—haven’t changed, but the content has evolved. For last year’s Frieze Art Fair in London, she created “The Vanishing Lake,” a site-specific exhibition of her drawings and tapestries shown within a Georgian house on Fitzroy Square. “I called it that because I saw part of myself as drying and not there anymore and I wanted to question the whole idea of love and passion, whether love exists anymore,” Emin says. “Why? Because I’m nearly 50, I’m single, because I don’t have children.”

To demonstrate what she means, Emin makes the short walk over to her new studio, a former 17th-century weaving works that she purchased and restored last year for $7.6 million. As Emin stands before the impressive four-story building and searches for her keys, it’s impossible not to notice how far the artist has come. Twenty years ago, she was renting a dreary bedsit in Waterloo, making art on her bedroom floor and struggling to find enough money to keep the electricity on. Today, in addition to her rambling home and studio, she owns a house on 35 acres in the South of France, near Saint-Tropez, where she retreats for most of the summer to work.

It’s late in the day, and the 15 people that she employs are long gone. As Emin walks through the building, she turns on lights. It’s clear why the studio took two and a half years to complete. There is an installation and sculpture room, as well as individual spaces for sewing, embroidery and drawing. On the top floor, Emin has her own private studio, with a kitchen, a well-stocked wine rack, a bedroom and bathroom. “I put the bedroom in because sometimes I don’t sleep very well at night and sometimes I like to rest in the afternoon,” she says. “But I’ve been thinking that when I’m really old and the stairs get too much for me at home, then I could just put an elevator in here and move in.”

Emin’s own touches are everywhere, from porcelain ornaments of cats, which she collects, to well-worn sofas that add a more personal feel to the space and on which she likes to think, draw and sew. But the pièce de résistance of the building has to be the 52-foot single-lap pool that she installed in the basement. The pool area is designed in the style of Victorian swimming baths, with porcelain tiles and a high ceiling. There are changing rooms and shower facilities, even a steam room. Swimming has always been one of Emin’s great passions, along with “drinking, dancing, sleeping, making art and reading, though not in that order,” she says. “The pool is a luxury, I know, but it gives me time to think.”

Lately emin has been spending a lot of time exploring notions of love and the limits of desire. On one of the studio’s floors, the walls are lined with recent preliminary drawings intended for her solo show at the Turner Contemporary in Margate this spring. She’s already named the exhibition “She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea.” “When I make art, when I’m thinking of a show, the title is always there first,” Emin says. “I can’t begin to work until I have that in place because I have to have the dialogue about what I am doing, that discourse within my head.”

Although love has always been an overriding theme in her work, it is something that seems to have eluded her in life. Of course, she has had significant relationships, most recently with the photographer Scott Douglas, with whom she split last year, and before that with fellow YBA Mat Collishaw. Despite the breakups, Emin remains friends with both—especially Collishaw, whom she still deeply cares about, if for no other reason than that he gave her Docket, her beloved cat, when they were together 10 years ago.

“You know, what I thought was love maybe wasn’t,” Emin says. “I understand that now. Maybe it was something else and I got it really wrong or misunderstood it. This is the kind of stuff I’m drawing, this is what I am thinking about when I am making art. What is love? I judged love against how I received it, and what I should have done is judged it on what I gave. Because that’s what I truly know. I’ve never been that successful with relationships. I have with friendships. So that means I have to put a big question mark over myself.

“I said to my mother the other day, ‘You know what, Mum, I could never have kids,’ ” Emin continues. “And she asked why, and I said because I could never have done that. Can you imagine—I’d be working all day, would be really tired, and then I wouldn’t be able to cook. And then you’ve got this husband sitting there with three children, and they’re all waiting to be fed, and I’d be like, ‘Do it yourself. Let the kids drive themselves to school.’

“I just wasn’t born or built for that. Don’t get me wrong—there are lots of people who manage to be creative and have families. But you know what they are called? Men!” she says, laughing.

Studio visit complete, we head back to Emin’s house. Hers is not some massive minimalist loft conversion filled with contemporary art and little else. Instead, home is a Georgian townhouse in the heart of Spitalfields that she has owned for 10 years. The residences that line her street, where fellow artists Gilbert and George also live, were built in 1729 for the Huguenot silk weavers who had settled in London and as such are Grade II listed and protected. “It’s a historic house, built and labored by hand, and the stairs are lethal,” says Emin, who painstakingly restored everything from the floorboards to the Arts and Crafts kitchen. “It’s a bit like being on a ship, really, because everything is crooked and creaky. But it has character.”

Looking around the rooms, most of which have original paneling and are painted in neutral hues sympathetic to the era of the house, I see none of the signs of Emin’s bad-girl days. There’s none of the bottles of vodka and condoms that surrounded her seminal 1998 “My Bed,” which she showed as part of her entry for the Turner Prize (an award that eluded her). In fact, Emin’s bed couldn’t be tidier. She loves fine linens and recently traded the Connaught Hotel in London a drawing in return for a box of its sheets. On the first floor, an old-fashioned drawing room is lined with sagging shelves holding her extensive collection of books—novels, biographies, poetry—and a roaring fire beckons. There is a large dark-wood Victorian table here, around which Emin likes to serve afternoon tea in bone china cups and play dominoes with her friends on winter afternoons. On the bench where she sits to play the game is a pile of toys—most of which appear to be mice that belong to Docket. Everywhere you look there are porcelain ornaments: of more cats, of mice, even a couple of rabbits on the kitchen hearth, which she has adorned with a string of colored fairy lights.

“I know it’s probably not really what people expect of me, but I like it,” she says with a smile. “The thing that’s important to me about this place is the fact that I live alone. It’s a house that’s big enough to live in with someone else but also small enough to live in alone, and there are very few places that have that feeling.”

In person, Emin is slighter and prettier than photographs suggest. She has a gentle manner that at times borders on vulnerability, and she is incredibly soft-spoken, despite her Estuary accent. When I arrived at her house this afternoon, her first priority was to introduce me to her mother, who was sitting by the fire in an upstairs drawing room. As I leave and make my way out into the cold, I struggle to connect Emin’s past with the woman she is now. I can’t help but think that the kind of girl who makes a point of introducing you to her mother is exactly the kind you would want to introduce to your own.

The Big Splurge

Tiger Golf Tour

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Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

No, not that Tiger. Julian Robertson, retired owner of the Tiger Fund, also created three luxurious golf resorts in different corners of New Zealand, which are ranked among the finest in the world. A new nine-day tour loops through them all, with stays at the Lodge at Kauri Cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean; the Farm at Cape Kidnappers in Hawke’s Bay wine country; and Matakauri Lodge on adventure-friendly Lake Wakatipu. The mighty steep price doesn’t include international airfare, but it does cover everything else: meals, helicopter trips, sailing excursions, horseback rides, winery tours and, of course, golf. From about $26,600 per couple; kauricliffs.com

The Cultural Escape

Asia’s Wright Stuff

Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust

The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust is leading a 12-day guided tour to Japan.

Frank Lloyd Wright was influenced by Japanese style for much of his life. On March 28, the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust is leading a 12-day guided tour to Japan, to explore the art that the architect took to heart. The journey passes through several cities (Tokyo, Kyoto, Atami, Osaka…), Wright’s three extant Japanese buildings, and a number of temples, museums and gardens. From $6,495 per person, including lodging, most meals, domestic transportation and entrance fees; wrightwaytravel.org

—Sara Clemence

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

With the holidays here, you may be inclined to put your job-search efforts on hold while you celebrate. But career advisers say laid-off professionals should keep at it—as “bah hum bug” as that may seem—because the season offers some unique opportunities to boost your odds of success.

Besides, “your bills aren’t taking a break,” says Jeffrey Garber, founder and chief executive officer of 360Jobinterview.com Inc., a virtual career-coaching company made up of more than 300 human-resources executives. “Make this week work for you.”

Start by accepting invitations to holiday parties or get-togethers, says Randy Block, a career-transition coach and consultant in Boyes Hot Springs, Calif. If friends you don’t often see invite you to a gathering at their home, try to attend. You’ll be exposed to people you haven’t met before—and you never know where a job lead might come from.

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But don’t hand out your résumé or bring up your job search while engaging with party-goers, asserts Mr. Block. “That’s a turn-off,” he explains. “It’s not about you.” Instead, he recommends asking people about their careers and employers. “The idea is to build relationships,” he says.

If the conversation turns to what you do, avoid saying that you’ve been laid off or are in-between jobs, advises Mr. Block. This can deter listeners. Instead, describe your expertise and name some companies or types of employers you’ve worked at and companies you are targeting, he says. “There’s a subtle difference,” he says.

If you meet someone who expresses interest in helping you or who works at one of your target firms, ask to get together after the New Year, suggests Mr. Block. Take out your Blackberry or iPhone to mark it down and you’ll prompt the listener to do the same, he says. “It’s a sales approach,” he explains. Also, ask if there’s anyone else at the party whom they might recommend you talk to, adds Mr. Block.

Another way to capitalize on the holidays is to tap family and friends for help improving your résumé, says Eric Dickerson, a partner executive-search firm Kaye/Bassman International Corp. in Plano, Texas. They’ll likely oblige if they’re off from work and more relaxed than usual, and they might even be eager to take a break from the festivities, he says.

While family and friends may not be experts in your field or industry, their support can make a difference, adds Mr. Dickerson. With their fresh perspective they might find misspellings or grammatical gaffes that you perhaps inserted or glazed over and that could be derailing your search. “It’s amazing the number of résumés that have typos,” says Mr. Dickerson.

You also can use the upcoming New Year holiday as an excuse to reconnect with hiring managers the old-fashioned way—through the mail, says Mr. Garber of 360Jobinterview.com. Send personalized greeting cards reminding them of your interest in a job you’ve applied or interviewed for, says Mr. Garber. “So rarely do you get something that’s hand-addressed,” he says. “It cuts through the clutter.”

Do the same for hiring managers or human-resources leaders at firms you’d like to work for but that aren’t currently advertising any openings that suit your background, adds Mr. Garber. Include a business card, ideally one that features a link to an online version of your résumé, and invite that person for a meet and greet, he says. This can be effective, he explains, because many employers wait until after the New Year to publicize new positions and your card can help put you top of mind.

Additionally, this strategy can be applied to former colleagues, friends, family and others in your network, says Joyce A. Foster, vice president of human resources for Hilex Poly Co. LLC, a plastic film and bag manufacturer in Hartsville, S.C. “Start by wishing them happy holidays and then update them on your search,” she says. “It can be a quick and timely reminder for them to perhaps forward your résumé to someone who might be of help.”

Ms. Foster says the holiday season is ideal for doing this because people tend be more generous with their time and energy when they’re away from work and in celebration mode. “Around the holidays, people generally just take more time to consider what they can do to help others,” she says.

Finally, you also might call hiring managers and recruiters between Christmas and New Year’s to try and sell your candidacy, says Mr. Dickerson. Assistants and other gatekeepers typically take that time off, while corporate leaders tend to go into work at least one or two of those days, he says. “A candidate would really have an opportunity to catch an executive in the office while they’re answering their own phone,” he says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

By PAUL BECKETT

As the election campaign enters its final stretch, tales abound of the shenanigans politicians employ to get the support of poor voters: color televisions, liquor, cash bribes.

Paul Beckett

How refreshing would it be instead to hear politicians – during the campaign (or at any other point for that matter) – talk about giving their constituents a lasting benefit, not something they can drink, stare at, or spend in minutes. Like pensions.

OK, it’s not a great rabble-rouser. But May 1 happens to be the day that all Indians can start making voluntary contributions to what has, until now, been a program exclusively reserved for civil service employees. That should provide potentially tens of millions of workers currently uncovered with some means of investing for their retirement, something the vast majority of Indians lack. Of the 450 million Indians of working age, only 10% currently have an organized pension plan – those who work for the government or for large salary-paying companies.

Even more interesting are efforts underway to bring the benefits of pensions to the nation’s poor and to encourage governments to do what most big employers do: Match individual contributions.

“Women as young as 30 years old are setting aside 50 to 100 rupees a month.”

Until recently, that has been a pipe dream since the poor can’t save enough to attract big investment houses to take their money nor do they have bank accounts in which to deposit their pension savings. Only 44% of the paid workforce has a bank account.

The fees involved in the new national voluntary contributions plans – a flat 800 rupees a year with a minimum savings of 6,000 a year – also are out of reach for many Indians. If you’re saving one lakh a year, 800 rupees in fees isn’t much; if you’re one of India’s 140 million paid workers who earn less than 3,000 a month, it’s usurious.

Enter micro pensions: Pensions that apply the approach of micro finance to retirement benefits. The idea has been around for a few years but is starting to take off. This week, Invest India Micro Pension Services, a Delhi-based micro-pensions service provider, teamed up with Hyderabad-based Basix, one of the biggest micro-finance banks, to offer pensions this year to about 700,000 of Basix’s 1.6 million poor, rural borrowers.

IIMPS has as investors and board representatives two of the first big players in micro-pensions: UTI, the asset management giant, and SEWA Bank, a bank run by the Ahmedabad-based Self Employed Women’s Association. The company uses a technology platform that allows for individual account holders identified by community-based organizations and NGOS. Their savings are then pooled and managed by UTI at no cost to the saver; UTI pays the cost of collection and transfer of funds.

Individual contributions can be tiny but Gautam Bhardwaj, IIMPS director, estimates there is the potential to generate $5 billion in annual pension contributions from more than 60 million people nationwide who could be savers under the plan.

SEWA’s own micro pension plan has 45,000 women enrolled and is expected to reach 100,000 this year, says Renana Jhabvala, SEWA national coordinator and an IIMPS board member. Women as young as 30 years old are setting aside 50 to 100 rupees a month. They tell SEWA they are doing so because “they see what is happening to their mothers, they have no money at all, and they see how they are treated,” Ms. Jhabvala says.

Mr. Bhardwaj says that even with these savings, it won’t be enough to lift poor workers out of poverty when they retire. So it requires government investment as a co-contributor. It’s not unheard of: The government gives wealthier workers financial incentives to save so why not the poor?

So far, Rajasthan is the only state to sign up, offering 1,000 rupees for every 1,000 rupees saved under the program. Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are looking too. It’s clearly not a party-political issue: A BJP government introduced the program in Rajasthan and it has continued under the new Congress government.

Amid all the vapid noise of the elections, it’s a quiet but meaningful example of how government can really help the “aam aadmi.”

—Paul Beckett is the WSJ bureau chief in New Delhi