"Business people and entrepreneurs throughout Brazil in all segments of the public favour Bolsonaro and will actively campaign for him,"Hang said.
Bolsonaro's growing acceptance among the business elites underscores how a polarised political landscape is driving moderates to extremes,and how markets are unsettled by a wide-open and unpredictable race. Those jitters have already slowed the country’s markets to a crawl and last month sent the currency,the real,to a record low against the dollar.
Bolsonaro is the current front-runner among 13 presidential candidates heading into the first round of balloting slated for October 7,with 31 per cent of the likely vote,according to the most recent survey by polling firm Ibope. Haddad had 21 per cent.
But whether he ultimately prevails remains to be seen. If no candidate wins a majority on the first ballot,as is predicted,the top two vote-getters will face off in a final round of voting on October 28,when the same poll shows both candidates even at 42 per cent.
Haddad,an economist,has been meeting with major investors to quell fears about a PT return to power. Known for his bookish,calm demeanour,Haddad has played up his orthodox positions on inflation,exchange rates and deficits.
Still,he has acknowledged he would dump the labour and spending reforms of unpopular outgoing President Michel Temer. And he has made it clear his administration would keep state-controlled oil company Petrobras and would scuttle the proposed sale of Embraer's commercial jet business to Boeing.
Haddad recently tweeted that the market was"an abstract entity that terrorises the public."
Corporate admirers of Bolsonaro,meanwhile,point to his choice of advisor Guedes as a reason to tune out their candidate's divisive rhetoric,authoritarian leanings and wildly shifting views on the economy. Bolsonaro,for example,once suggested that ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso be gunned down for privatising former government enterprises including iron ore miner Vale.
In contrast,Guedes,currently the head of an asset management firm,is a fierce advocate of privatising Petrobras and government-controlled bank Banco do Brasil.
If elected,Bolsonaro has promised to make Guedes a kind of super minister in charge of finance,planning and trade,with wide latitude to set economic policy.
Guedes has held a series of meetings with investment banks,corporate chieftains and international investors to coax them onto the Bolsonaro bandwagon. The banker has also met with members of the Finance Ministry at least three times in an effort to signal continuity with Temer's reform agenda,including changes to the country's insolvent pension system.
"Paulo Guedes indeed gives Bolsonaro's candidacy a lot of credibility,"said Claudio Pacini,head of Brazilian stock trading at US broker INTL FCStone in Miami."Together with the fear of the rise of the left,the two things mitigate in Bolsonaro's favour."
But some question how long the Bolsonaro-Guedes partnership might last even if the candidate is elected.
"Bolsonaro is a recent convert to pro-market liberalism - that's not his thing,it's never been his thing,"said Monica de Bolle,director of Latin American studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Such doubts were heightened last month when Guedes proposed reviving an unpopular financial transactions tax to raise badly needed revenue. That idea was swiftly shot down byBolsonaro from the hospital where he has been convalescing. He was stabbed by a mentally disturbed assailant at a campaign rally last month.
Guedes cancelled at least two planned public appearances soon after,fuelling speculation that he had been effectively muzzled by the campaign for the time being.
Guedes declined to comment about the disagreement. But de Bolle sees turbulence ahead.
"It seems obvious that Paulo Guedes wouldn't last in a Bolsonaro government,"she said.
Many also wonder how effectively Bolsonaro might govern if elected. In nearly three decades in Congress,he has not authored a single significant piece of legislation.
The Associated Press reviewed and categorised all 642 legislative filings by Bolsonaro since he entered Congress in 1991. These included proposals for new laws,amendments to current ones,requests to ministers for information and calls for commemorations.
The portrait that emerges is one of a candidate interested in helping the military above all else while also being openly hostile toward gays,transsexuals and any attempt to loosen the nation's abortion laws. Bolsonaro's few legislative successes and apparent inability to get other lawmakers to buy into his ideas raise questions about how he would govern in a multi-party environment.
His Social Liberty Party,the ninth party to which he has belonged,has only a smattering of votes in Brazil's legislature. He would need to forge alliances with other parties to get anything done,a task at which he has little experience.
“The government is broke and Bolsonaro has no allies to push for budget cuts,and not even a history of pursuing them,"said a senior banker at one of Brazil's top lenders.
For the business community,the banker said,a vote for Bolsonaro is a choice between “the awful and the extremely awful.”
Reuters,AP