M?RCIO A. CYPRIANO
A former CEO of Banco Bradesco, one of the largest private banks in Brazil. He began his banking career in 1967 as a clerk with Banco da Bahia, which merged with Bradesco in 1973. After the merger, he became a branch manager, and over the years, he worked his way up through the company, becoming executive vice president in 1995, CEO in 1999 and a board member in 2002. Luiz Carlos Trabuco Cappi succeeded him as CEO in 2009, but Cypriano remains a board member.
Cypriano wanted to bring the bank more clients, which he did by expanding clientele from the low and middle end into the high end, and by increasing services for low-income customers. He maintained the bank's emphasis on retail banking while making the company more transparent. He made Bradesco the first bank in Latin America to offer online banking (lowering the company's operating costs in the process), acquired Banco Mercantil de Sao Paolo and made the bank more profitable.