Large corporations in space production: the real estate activities of the Votorantim Group's through investment funds

• Grant number: 20/15264-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2021
• End date: May 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Maria Beatriz Cruz Rufino
• Grantee: Beatriz Silva Colpani
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a process of strengthening the performance of Large Corporations in the production of space. Ensuring increasing levels of coordination of spatial transformations, the action of these groups ends up illuminating important specificities of the process of urban financialization in the Brazilian context. This research project aims to analyze the performance of a Large Corporation, prioritizing its action in the administration, management, and ownership of Real Estate Investment Funds. The methodological development of the research is based on the case study of the Votorantim Group, with a focus on the Investment Funds managed by Banco Votorantim (BV). Votorantim Group is simultaneously the largest producer of orange juice in the world, the first in the ranking of national cement companies and one of the largest managers of Real Estate Investment Funds in Brazil. Throughout its trajectory, the group has increasingly adopted the diversification of investments. Based on a historical and theoretical perspective, our proposal looks to recover the construction and consolidation of the group in its articulations with the production of space, from the 1990s to the present day. This proposal is part of the project "Real Estate and Infrastructure under the domain of Large Corporations: Financialization and metropolization of space in São Paulo of the 21st Century", funded by FAPESP (Regular Assistance - 2019/18881-0), which studies the strengthening of the performance of the Large Corporations in the production of space in the last 20 years. Through different strategies, these corporations have been central in the definition of financialization and metropolization processes. (AU)