Who Owns Itaú?

The brand's lineage splits into two banks. Banco Itaú descends from Banco Central de Crédito, founded in 1944 and later renamed within the Itaú group controlled by the Ermírio de Moraes industrial family. Through the late 20th century it grew into one of Brazil's largest private banks, acquiring Banco Francês e Brasileiro and other institutions.

Unibanco, founded in 1924 as Banco Moreira Salles in Poços de Caldas and rebuilt into a national retail bank by the Moreira Salles family, was the other pillar. The two merged on November 4, 2008, creating Itaú Unibanco in what was then the largest banking merger in Southern Hemisphere history, instantly forming Latin America's biggest bank.

Post-merger milestones include the 2012 acquisition of Credicard from Citigroup, making Itaú Brazil's largest card issuer; the 2017 acquisition of Citibank's Brazilian retail operations; the purchase of broker XP's rival brokerage assets and the later spin-off of the XP stake; and a major digital transformation that moved most customer activity to mobile channels.

In the 2020s the group sharpened its focus on Latin America, integrating Chilean and Colombian operations, expanding the Rede acquiring business, and investing in digital accounts. For 2025 the holding reported revenue of about $33.2 billion, net income of about $8.8 billion, total assets of $559.3 billion, and 92,470 employees, remaining the seventy-third largest bank in the world and the largest in Latin America.