Walter Moreira Sales

Walter Moreira Salles, also Walther Moreira Salles (28 May 1912 – 27 February 2001), was a Brazilian banker, politician and philanthropist, considered as one of the founders of the modern Brazilian banking industry.

Career

Moreira Salles was born in 1912 in Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Largo de São Francisco at the University of São Paulo. In 1926, his father, João Moreira Salles, founded Casa Bancária Moreira Salles in the city of Poços de Caldas, approximately northwest of Pouso Alegre. Walter Moreira Salles joined the family business as an acting partner in 1933, at the age of 21.

In 1940, Banco Moreira Salles merged with three regional banks, a process that ultimately resulted in the creation of União de Bancos Brasileiros (Unibanco). During his leadership, Moreira Salles pursued a strategy of acquisitions while placing particular emphasis on the development of the institution's workforce, contributing to Unibanco's emergence as one of Brazil's three largest private banks. After six decades with the institution, he stepped down as chairman of the board in 1991 and assumed the position of honorary chairman, dedicating his efforts primarily to the group's cultural initiatives.

Between 1990 and 1991, Moreira Salles established the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), a nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of cultural activities in the fields of photography, literature, libraries, visual arts and Brazilian music. He served as the institute's first president. In 1992, IMS inaugurated the Casa de Cultura de Poços de Caldas, located in the city where Casa Bancária Moreira Salles had originally been founded. The institute subsequently expanded its activities and now operates cultural centres in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Poços de Caldas and Belo Horizonte, as well as galleries in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Porto Alegre.

Poços de Caldas Airport was named in his honour.

Political involvement

Moreira Salles was also involved in Brazilian politics. He was the country's ambassador to the United States in the 1950s, serving in Washington D.C. twice during the decade. He was Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinet of João Goulart, and gained the favour of President Juscelino Kubitschek for his work as a conciliator in his diplomatic incursions. In the 1950s he helped negotiate the growing problem of Brazil's external debt on three occasions, during the governments of Getúlio Vargas, Kubitschek and Jânio Quadros.

Personal and family life Moreira Salles had many celebrity friends, including the rock musician Mick Jagger, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the actress Greta Garbo. Moreira Salles died in 2001, at Araras, in the district of Petrópolis, in Rio, of causes not disclosed by his family.

His four sons are Pedro Moreira Salles, current president of Unibanco; filmmaker Walter Salles; documentarian João Moreira Salles; publisher Fernando Moreira Salles.

Salles was married three times, to Helène Matarazzo, the mother of Fernando, whom he divorced at the age of 28; Eliza Gonçalves, the mother of Pedro, Walter and João, and his wife until the early 1970s; and Lúcia, whom he married in 1986.