Luso

Bank Acquisition Vehicle

Banking infrastructure doesn't fail all at once. It accumulates technical debt, regulatory workarounds, and misallocated capital until the cost of operating exceeds the value created. The standard response is to patch or build around it.

Luso was founded on a different thesis: that solving the problem requires operating inside a charter, not beside one. Tech companies can build banking infrastructure without accountability for actual bank performance. The moment you own the charter, accountability changes everything: the technology roadmap, the risk frameworks, and the regulatory posture.

The market has since moved in that direction, proving the thesis. Well-capitalized platforms are now building from inside a charter.

The Work

The first serious target was a diligence exit: litigation of sufficient scale to walk away. It was subsequently acquired by a third party, validating the asset.

The second target was a distressed acquisition through a bankruptcy process. The work produced a full operating plan, regulatory strategy, HoldCo/BankCo/TechCo governance framework, capital structure analysis, and investor-ready return modeling validated by M&A advisors. The decision to pass came down to capital on a fire sale timeline; two subsequent approved bidders also failed to close. When the target fell through, the model was updated for a blank-slate acquisition: control position, technology roadmap, and HoldCo-level returns.

About

Dani Barajas CFA Charterholder

Dani Barajas has spent 25 years understanding how financial infrastructure works and where it breaks.

At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, she wrote the first internal analysis of AIG's liquidity position two months before the downgrade, then spent two years structuring $145B in federal support, executing $36B in divestitures, and building the Maiden Lane SPVs. At Evercore and HSBC in São Paulo, she executed cross-border M&A across LatAm markets, including the GMAC Brazil divestiture and the Petrobras pipeline sale. At Citigroup, she ran corporate strategy across 20+ countries, formed an $800M bancassurance partnership, and then managed a $67M annual technology budget for Treasury and Trade Solutions while leading LIBOR remediation at scale. At Novo, she joined at Series A, built six functions from scratch, migrated a 100K-card portfolio to a modern stack, negotiated a $22.6M Mastercard exclusivity deal, and reduced fraud and operational losses by 76%.

Each chapter has been solving for the same challenges: regulatory constraints, tech that can't keep up, and how to make money by taking the right risks.

Dani holds a master's in international economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS and is a CFA Charterholder. She is based in Miami.