Wealth diversification strategies aim to eliminate idiosyncratic risk. Those strategies are not available for controlling shareholders in companies like in Brazil, where control is highly valued, and shareholders don’t want to risk losing it, as seen in Leal et al (2002). In this context, idiosyncratic risk should be relevant for capital structure decision making. To test this hypothesis, a sample of 329 private firms in B3 from 2003 to 2017 is used. Regressions with instrumental variables show that 1 standard deviation change in idiosyncratic risk impacts in a reduction in leverage of 0.18 standard deviations. This relation is not found among government-controlled firms. Thus, propriety concentration magnifies financing problems and capital allocation in private firms.