Brazil's Cetip, Latin America's largest clearing house, anticipates fetching up to 1 billion reais ($576 million) in an offering of stock, underscoring the growing appetite for the nation's booming securities industry among local and foreign investors.

Shareholders of the Rio de Janeiro-based company set a price range of 13 reais ($7.50) to 17 reais per share, according to a statement published on Tuesday. The original offering of 58.95 million voting shares could be increased by as much as 15 percent if demand tops expectations.

The announcement comes about a week after the Brazilian unit of Spain's Banco Santander raised 14.1 billion reais with its IPO in Sao Paulo and New York -- the largest ever in Brazil and the biggest in the world since March 2008.

Brazilian companies have sold 25 billion reais of shares so far in 2009. Most of the sales have occurred since late June when expectations of a rebound in global growth stoked appetite for riskier investments in emerging-market stocks.

Shareholders of Cetip, which clears transactions involving fixed income securities and over-the-counter derivatives, sold a 30 percent stake to private equity firm Advent International for 360 million reais in May.

The company, formerly called Cetip Balcao Organizado de Ativos e Derivativos, was founded in 1986 as a venture between Brazil's central bank and private-sector financial firms, has 2.61 trillion reais in more than 50 different asset classes.

Itau BBA, the wholesale and investment banking unit of Itau Unibanco, Brazil's largest non-government bank, is managing the secondary offering. The securities units of Banco Bradesco, Credit Suisse, Banco Santander and Brazil-based BTG Pactual to co-manage the transaction.

The shares should begin trading in the Sao Paulo-based Bovespa stock exchange by Oct. 28, according to the statement. ($1=1.738 reais) (Additional reporting by Stella Fontes and Gabriela Mello; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Investment