Career Biography

Maria Fernanda Caramuru has served as Legal, Compliance and Corporate Risks Officer of Itaúsa S.A. since 2019. Itaúsa is one of the largest investment holding companies in Latin America, with strategic stakes in leading Brazilian businesses, including Itaú Unibanco, Alpargatas, Dexco, Aegea, Motiva, NTS and Copa Energia. She leads one of the most strategically important in-house legal functions in the Brazilian market, overseeing mergers and acquisitions, corporate law, risk management, integrity and governance across a diversified portfolio. Her work supports Itaúsa’s active portfolio management model and its disciplined approach to capital allocation, which underpin the company’s long-term value creation.

She holds a Law degree from PUC-SP (1996), a specialisation in Business Law from PUC-SP (1999–2000), an LL.M. from Columbia Law School (2004), and an MBA from Columbia Business School (2009). She has further strengthened her executive credentials through the Advanced Boardroom Program for Women (ABP-W) at Saint Paul Escola de Negócios, including an international module at the University of Melbourne (2024–2025), combining a strong legal foundation with a global executive perspective.

She began her career at the law firms Neumann, Salusse & Marangoni and TozziniFreire, followed by international experience as an International Associate at Milbank in New York, focusing on capital markets and structured finance. In 2000, she joined Itaú Unibanco, where she spent over a decade as a senior corporate lawyer specialising in proprietary M&A, advising on contracts, strategic partnerships and complex corporate restructurings.

In 2013, she moved to Itaúsa as a consulting lawyer, progressively taking on broader responsibilities across new portfolio investments, compliance and corporate risk. From 2016 to 2019, she served as Managing Officer of Itaúsa Empreendimentos S.A., before assuming her current role at the holding company. She has also served as an Officer of Itautec S.A. since 2016 and sits on several of Itaúsa’s key advisory committees, including Audit and Risk Management, Disclosure and Trading, Corporate Governance, Investment, and Sustainability.

Her career highlights include leading the legal workstreams of transformational transactions that reshaped Itaúsa’s portfolio. These include the 2017 acquisition of Alpargatas and subsequent investments in NTS, Copa Energia, Aegea and Motiva, strengthening the company’s exposure to resilient infrastructure and energy platforms. She also played a key role in the divestments of Elekeiroz and Itautec, streamlining the portfolio and reinforcing capital allocation discipline. In parallel, she consolidated Itaúsa’s compliance and integrity framework and strengthened corporate risk management as a core pillar of governance. Under her leadership, Itaúsa’s legal team was recognised in the Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Brazil Teams 2017.

A strong advocate for the integrity agenda, she regularly writes and speaks about compliance programmes that integrate ethics, governance and long-term value. For her, governance is not simply about structure, but about mindset – a daily commitment to transparency, accountability and sound decision-making.