Background
Olavo Setúbal was born in São Paulo Paulo, (his surname comes from the city Setúbal in Portugal, where his great grandfather was born) he decided to be an engineer at an early age against his father wishes.
Olavo Setúbal was born in São Paulo Paulo, (his surname comes from the city Setúbal in Portugal, where his great grandfather was born) he decided to be an engineer at an early age against his father wishes.
In 1945, he graduated by Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo and started to work as professor-assistant at IPT.
He was Mayor of São Paulo from 1975 to 1979, Minister of External Relations from 1986 to 1987, and chairman of the Itaúsa conglomerate from 2001 to his death in 2008. He advised him to be a lawyer instead of an engineer saying "Engineering is a second rate career. You should be a lawyer because they are the ones prepared to lead Brazil".
His mother, Francisca Setúbal, had to support his studies from the age of 13 onwards.
With United States$ 10,000 that he managed to save, Setúbal and an old school friend bought two machines founding Deca, the company produced parts for knobs and faucets and had ten employees at the time. The beginning was difficult but in 1953 the company started to recover when introduced the industry of flush valve.
He owned Duratex and a small bank called Banco Federal de Crédito. Setúbal successfully freed both institutions from debt.
He started to hunt big clients and obtained resources that allowed financing bigger operations.
One of his first measures was to make sure all managers had high school level In the 60"s, Setúbal realised that there was no other way to expand the business if other institutions were not incorporated. When Itaú was bought, the list of clients was mainly rural, the bank became the 16th biggest in Brazil.
New merges happened and slowly Setúbal became the 2nd biggest banker in Brazil by the end of the 1970s.
The successful professional career approached his relations with politics. In 1975, the governor Paulo Egydio Martins appointed him to the post of Mayor of São Paulo.
About his time in office as mayor he stated: "lieutenant was one of the rare periods I had insomnia and had to take medicines to sleep..", "Administrating the city is a fantastic thing, I feel honored. but you have to work much harder than you do while running a bank and the salary is much lower."
During president José Sarney administration in 1985 he was appointed as Minister of Foreign Relations, the appointment was actually made by Tancredo Neves. In an internal election at PFL, he was defeated and gave up the idea of running for Governor of São Paulo in 1986 retiring from the political life.