Nubank’s IPO will cap off a record year of more than $ 600 billion in global IPOs, a frenzy that has fueled one of the fastest periods of wealth creation in modern history.
However, it comes at a difficult time. Nubank goes public in the United States just as Brazilian companies withdraw their planned offerings on the local stock market amid lackluster growth, the fallout from the more than 616,000 COVID-related deaths and a political situation that scares some investors.
IPOs on US exchanges have performed better. The price of the transaction, of US $ 9 per share, was located at the upper end of the indicated range. The 20% stake of the CEO and co-founder of Nubank, David Vélez, is valued at US $ 8.9 billion, making him the 10th richest person in Latin America. Junqueira owns approximately 2.6% of Nubank and the stake of its third founder, Edward Wible, was not disclosed in the IPO prospectus.
Junqueira had to face especially great difficulties to get promoted in Brazil. Although gender disparity is a problem worldwide, it is pronounced in Latin America. Only 1% of the companies that make up Brazil’s benchmark stock index have a woman as CEO, compared to 6% for the S&P 500, according to Bloomberg data. And less than 10% of startups in the country have a woman among their founders, according to a study by the Dataminer District, B2Mamy and Endeavor.
“The technology and innovation ecosystems in Brazil are predominantly male,” said Lilian Natal, District partner. “You look around and feel like you don’t belong,” she added.
CEO Velez, a former partner at Sequoia Capital, one of Nubank’s early backers, will hold about 75% of the company’s voting rights after the IPO. Junqueira runs Nubank’s Brazilian operations, where most of its revenue originates.
Without Velez’s connections to private equity “things could have been very different,” says Wishe’s Bassetti. “That’s what slows down a lot of startups founded by women.”
The daughter of two dentists, Junqueira was born in Ribeirão Preto, a city in the countryside of Brazil’s richest state, São Paulo, Junqueira studied engineering and later worked at Boston Consulting Group.
